Running it

Your documentation is in one language and your team is not

A warehouse team asks in Russian, a site crew asks in Arabic, the office asks in Hebrew, and the policy document exists in one of those. Today those questions go to whoever on the shift reads the right language, which is a person with another job. The assistant case here is strong and it has one specific failure mode that nobody tests for.

The question arrives in one language and the source is in another

This is the whole mechanism and it is worth understanding before buying anything: the answer has to be found in a document the asker cannot read and delivered in a language the document is not written in. That works well for procedural content and badly for anything where wording carries weight - which is exactly the distinction to make before switching it on, not after.

What is safe to render in any language

Shift times, holiday entitlement in general terms, where to find a form, who to tell about an absence, what the procedure is for a damaged item, how to book a vehicle. Operational content, where a slightly different phrasing changes nothing. This is most of the volume and it is the part worth automating first.

What must stay in the original, and why

Anything a person could be held to or could rely on to their own detriment: disciplinary wording, contractual terms, a safety instruction whose precision matters, anything a regulator has approved in a specific language. The correct behaviour is to answer in the asker's language that the document says something specific, and then give the original rather than a paraphrase of it. A translated safety instruction is a new instruction.

The failure nobody tests for

An assistant that cannot find an answer in the asker's language will sometimes answer from a different language's version of a document - an older handbook, a regional variant, a page nobody updated. The result is fluent, confident and wrong in a way the asker cannot detect, because they cannot read the source. Test for it deliberately: ask in each language a question whose answer differs between your versions, and see which one comes back.

Frequently asked questions

Should we translate the whole handbook first?
Usually not, and that is the useful finding. Translate the procedural sections people actually ask about - which the unanswered log identifies within a month - and leave the rest in the original with the assistant pointing at it. Full translation is a large project that mostly produces pages nobody opens.
Can staff ask in a language we do not publish in at all?
They will, and what the assistant does then is worth deciding in advance. Answering from a language they did not ask in is sometimes right and must be visible: say which language the source is in. Silently translating a document nobody has approved for that audience is the behaviour to prevent.
How do we check an answer in a language nobody in HR reads?
The same way you would check a new employee's work: sample it, on a schedule, with somebody who does read it. Require the assistant to show which document each answer came from, and the check becomes comparing a citation rather than judging a translation.
Is this worth doing for a team of twenty?
It depends on who is currently answering. If the bilingual supervisor is interrupted eight times a shift, the cost is concentrated on one person and is larger than the headcount suggests. That is the number worth measuring before deciding, and it is usually measured by asking them.
What about staff who prefer to ask a person?
Most will, at first, and the ones who do not are often the ones who were least willing to ask at all - which is a result worth noticing. Keep the human route open and visible; an assistant that is the only option gets resented rather than used.

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