Inbox and Discussion Translation in Canvas

This one-page overview provides a summary of our AI-powered Inbox & Discussions Translations in Canvas. This feature can be enabled at the course level so educators and students can leverage real-time, context-sensitive translation of content across 100 languages.

View the PDF in Google Drive

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dmackay1i

I have tested this in our Beta environment and have not yet been able to get a message translated. I've tried all of the various combinations of options, but all I see is the message "Checking for Translation" and a spinning wheel.

Does the translation feature take some time to process each message? Or could something be awry in our Beta environment? We have no significant customisations or anything else that I think would interfere with this feature.

rake_9

We can get this to work, sort of. The title of the initial post gets translated, some of the responses get translations, and then, if you interact with an untranslated response, that will generate a translation. Almost like the process times out and doesn't complete the job?

starnerst

Will teachers be able to turn this off for Discussions but leave on for Inbox? We have numerous World Language teachers who use Discussions as part of their classroom activities and it would defeat the purpose of the assignment if the student can use the translation tool to translate the prompt/replies in the Discussion.

rake_9

@starnerst The Inbox function is global; it is on or off for everyone. The Discussions function is the sort that can be opt-in or opt-out at the course level, depending on what your institutional admins set.

PaulvanEmden

Hi!

When I look at the feature options in our production environment, I can't enable the 'Course AI translation' feature option, and the 'Inbox AI translation' feature option is not available at all. I can see both in the beta environment and I can enable them there as well.

According to the release notes they should be available from 2024-11-16.

Kind regards,

Paul

clpatter

AI Translations, as well as a few other things, were delayed until 1/18/2025. This pages shows all the delays and updates: Canvas Releases

kylejtuck

In order to get Discussion Translation working, we had to enable it at the account level. It was unlocked at the account level, and we could enable it at the course level, but the option wouldn't show up in discussions until we enabled it at the account level.

Selecting subsequent languages has strange behaviour. In the example below, I first selected French, then Spanish, then Armenian. This is the discussion topic that has no message.

No message----------

Pas de message----------

No hay mensaje- - - - -

No hay mensaje

The translations in the responses seem to include a 2nd French or Spanish translation (some have 2 French, others have 2 Spanish), but the Armenian translation does not appear.

Daniel_OConnor

Are there any updates on when this feature will be rolled out? We are currently trying to plan for the next academic year, and want to know if we should begin advertising this feature to our Bilingual families.

DrTerriC

I am posting to bump this up.. as a Hispanic serving institution I am interested.

JingZou

Is there a evaluation of the accuracy of the AI translations? I tried to translate from English to Chinese and the result was not satisfying.