Languages (English & Arabic)
Your agent can answer in English, in Arabic, or in both — and when it does both, the caller’s language is decided per conversation, without you configuring anything twice.
Where: Dashboard → Agents → your agent → Edit → Language.
Two languages are available today: English and Arabic (Gulf/Saudi dialect). Arabic covers speech recognition, the agent’s voice, and the website widget. The Televox dashboard itself is in English.
Choosing a language for an agent
The Language dropdown on the agent has three settings:
| Setting | The agent… | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| English | Always speaks English. | An English-speaking market. |
| العربية — Arabic (Saudi) | Always speaks Arabic, in a Saudi-dialect voice. | An Arabic-speaking market, or a dedicated Arabic line. |
| Multilingual — asks the caller | Runs each conversation in whichever language that customer wants. | One number serving both languages. |
What multilingual actually shares
This is the part worth understanding, because it’s the reason you don’t end up maintaining two agents:
- Shared, written once: the system prompt, knowledge base, actions, extractors, integrations, webhooks, call limits. Update your prices once and both languages are correct.
- Per language: the greeting and the voice — the two things a customer actually hears.
When you pick Multilingual, an EN | العربية tab strip appears with a greeting and voice field for each language.
Greetings are spoken exactly as you type them (they’re never generated), so an Arabic agent needs its greeting written in Arabic. If you leave the Arabic greeting empty, the English one is spoken to Arabic callers — which is rarely what you want.
Voices
Each language has its own voice list, and you pick one per language:
- English — the full catalogue of English voices.
- Arabic — Saudi-dialect voices (Maryam, Ahmed, Mohammed).
Choosing separately means each language sounds native, rather than one accent stretched across both.
How the language of a conversation is decided
Different channels have different tools available — a phone has a keypad, a chat doesn’t — so each one uses what suits it. You don’t configure any of this; it’s automatic for Multilingual agents.
| Channel | How the language is chosen |
|---|---|
| Phone call | The caller hears a short bilingual prompt — “For English press 1 — للغة العربية اضغط ٢” — and presses a key. |
| WhatsApp chat | Nothing is asked. The agent replies in whatever language the customer writes in, message by message. |
| Website chat | Same — the agent mirrors the customer’s language. |
| WhatsApp voice note | Each note is transcribed in the language spoken and answered with a voice note in that same language and voice. |
| WhatsApp call (beta) | No keypad exists, so the call follows the language of your existing chat with that customer. For a first-time caller, their country is used (a +966 caller gets Arabic). |
| Website voice call | The widget’s language (see below) decides. |
If the caller presses nothing
The prompt replays once, then the call proceeds in the language suggested by the caller’s country — a Saudi number gets Arabic, everything else gets English.
A conversation runs in one language from start to finish. If a caller switches languages mid-call the agent will struggle, because speech recognition is locked to a language when the call begins. Customers who drop English words into Arabic sentences are handled normally — that’s very common in the Gulf — but a full mid-call switch isn’t supported today.
Two agents instead of one
Prefer a genuinely separate Arabic agent — its own name, persona, even its own prompt? Do that instead, and let a router send each caller to the right one:
Create both agents
One with Language = English, one with Language = العربية.
Create a router
Dashboard → Routing → New router.
Add a “Language ask” rule
The rule plays the bilingual prompt and sends 1 → your English agent and 2 → your Arabic agent.
Point your number at the router
Dashboard → Phone numbers → choose the router instead of an agent.
Both shapes are supported — one multilingual agent is simpler to maintain; two agents give you more control over persona. See Routing for menus and the other rule types.
The website chat widget in Arabic
The widget has its own language setting, independent of the agent.
Where: Dashboard → Agents → your agent → Web Chat → Appearance.
- Widget Language — English, or العربية which renders the whole widget right-to-left with Arabic labels.
- Let visitors switch language — adds a compact EN | ع toggle in the widget header, so bilingual visitors choose for themselves.
- With the switcher enabled, your title, welcome message and launcher tooltip each get an Arabic variant, edited on the EN | العربية tabs.
The language the visitor is using is also the language a voice call started from the widget runs in.
Arabic and the Live board
Everything on the Live board works identically in Arabic. Arabic calls and chats appear as they happen with the transcript in Arabic, and your team can listen to a live Arabic call, join it, or take over an Arabic chat and hand it back to the AI afterwards.
Which Arabic?
Gulf Arabic, with Saudi dialects (Najdi and Hijazi) as the primary target — not Modern Standard Arabic. MSA is understood everywhere and spoken naturally nowhere; an agent answering customers in MSA sounds like it’s reading them the news.
Callers from elsewhere in the Gulf and the wider Arab world are generally understood well, but Saudi speech is what the system is built around.
Honest limits
- English and Arabic only. Other languages are on the roadmap, not in the product.
- One language per conversation — no mid-call switching (see the warning above).
- Arabic calls answer slightly slower than English ones. The model that predicts when a caller has finished speaking supports English only for now, so Arabic calls wait a little longer before replying.
- Phone numbers are US numbers today. On WhatsApp your business uses its own existing number, whatever country it’s from.
- The dashboard is English. Your customers get Arabic; your staff administer in English.
- WhatsApp voice calling is beta. WhatsApp messages and voice notes are not.
FAQ
Do I need two agents to support two languages?
No. Set one agent to Multilingual and it handles both, sharing one prompt and knowledge base with a greeting and voice per language. Two separate agents remain an option if you want a different persona per language — a router’s Language rule then sends each caller to the right one.
Does the knowledge base need to be translated into Arabic?
No. The agent can answer in Arabic from English documents. Adding Arabic source material does improve the wording of Arabic answers, so it’s worth doing for content customers ask about constantly — but it isn’t required to get started.
Will an Arabic caller hear an English voice by mistake?
No. If a conversation resolves to Arabic, the agent uses the Arabic voice you selected. If you somehow have an Arabic agent with an English-only voice selected, Televox substitutes an Arabic-capable voice rather than producing unintelligible audio.
Can my customers call and press nothing?
Yes. The prompt replays once, then the call continues in the language suggested by the caller’s country (Saudi and other Arabic-speaking countries → Arabic, otherwise English). Nobody gets stuck.
Does the language menu slow down answering?
Yes, by a few seconds — the caller hears the prompt and presses a key before the agent greets them. Numbers pointed at a single fixed-language agent keep the instant answer with no prompt at all.