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botframeworkazure-language-understanding

Culture-specific understanding in LUIS

We are trying to create a multi-language chat bot using Azure Bot Framework and LUIS. While designing the architecture we are struggling to understand following points:

  1. I am not able to see 'en-GB' in the list of supported languages mentioned in following blog. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/luis/luis-supported-languages. Does that mean LUIS does not support 'en-GB'?
  2. If so, will LUIS really struggle to understand the query written in 'en-GB' as far as this app is just a chat bot and not voice bot?
  3. Do we need to do anything special so that LUIS can understand query written in any supported language say 'de-DE' and map it to utterances modeled in 'English'?
Solution
    1. I am not able to see 'en-GB' in the list of supported languages mentioned in following blog. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/luis/luis-supported-languages. Does that mean LUIS does not support 'en-GB'?

    Yes. But in fact the announced language is English, not American English or British English (see below)

    1. If so, will LUIS really struggle to understand the query written in 'en-GB' as far as this app is just a chat bot and not voice bot?

    You can use en-US language. There is no link with chat vs voice capability, LUIS is only treating text items. For voice, you need to use other tools first like STT (Speech-to-text) tools.

    1. Do we need to do anything special so that LUIS can understand query written in any supported language say 'de-DE' and map it to utterances modeled in 'English'?

    Yes, you have to translate your items.

    When you create a project (called an app) in LUIS, the 1st setting that you must provide is the Culture (see capture below).

    Culture selection

    If you want to use several languages in a chatbot project for example, you have at least 2 possibilities:

    • Create 1 LUIS app for each language, and call the right one. You can select the right one by several ways (using the locale if selected by the user, or using Language detection APIs for example)
    • Create 1 global LUIS app in 1 language (choosing English may be the right option as LUIS main feature are available in English first) and make a translation before calling LUIS.

    I would recommend the 1st solution because translation is never perfect and may be loosing context which can be important for LUIS.