How to set up multilingual for multilingual clinical tria…

This guide is for Clinical Trial Sites & CROs that need to recruit participants in multiple languages. You’ll need:

• A Chatref account with an active agent (if you haven’t created one, you can start for free at app.chatref.ai).
• Recruitment materials in each target language – these can be PDFs, web pages, or plain text. Include study descriptions, eligibility criteria, consent information, and contact details. Each language’s content must use approved medical terminology and phrasing – don’t rely on machine translation for official documents.
• A list of the languages you want to support. Chatref can serve up to 11 languages, so pick the ones where you actively recruit. If a visitor’s language isn’t covered, the agent falls back to your default language.

1. Log in to your Chatref workspace and select the agent you want to configure for clinical trial recruitment. If you haven’t created one yet, click “New Agent” and give it a name like “Trial Recruitment - Multilingual”.

2. Open the Knowledge Base. From the agent’s dashboard, click “Knowledge Base” in the sidebar.

3. Upload your recruitment content per language. Add each document that represents a separate language. For clarity, name the files with a language suffix such as eligibility-en.pdf, criterios-eligibilidad-es.pdf, or recrutement-fr.pdf. Supported formats include PDFs, URLs, and plain text. If you have a multilingual website, you can provide the URL for each language version – Chatref will crawl them individually.

   Important: Keep content for different languages in separate files. Avoid uploading a single document that mixes multiple languages; the agent performs best when it can associate a response with a specific language’s source.

4. Enable multilingual support in agent settings. Go to “Settings” (gear icon) and find the “Multilingual” section. Turn on “Enable multilingual responses” – this tells the agent to detect the visitor’s language and answer using content from that language.

5. Set your default language. In the same settings panel, choose the fallback language (for example, English). When a visitor’s language isn’t supported or the agent can’t find a matching answer in their language, it responds in this fallback.

6. Optionally, label uploaded files with their language. If your plan includes language tagging, click on each uploaded document in the knowledge base and select its language from the dropdown. This step isn’t required for Chatref to work, but it helps the agent route queries with higher accuracy, especially when file names don’t make the language obvious.

7. Save your changes. The agent is now configured to handle multilingual queries. There’s no need to create separate agents for each language – a single agent can cover up to 11 languages from one knowledge base.

• Use the Playground (found in the agent’s sidebar). Type a common candidate question in one of your target languages, such as “¿Cuáles son los criterios de inclusión?” for Spanish. The agent should respond in Spanish and include a source reference from your Spanish-language document – not a translation of English content. Verify that the answer uses your approved terminology.
• Test a supported language you didn’t upload content for. If you added French and German documents but no Italian, asking a question in Italian should trigger the fallback: the agent will answer in your default language (English, for instance) or indicate it doesn’t have enough information.
• Try a language with mixed queries. If a visitor starts in Spanish but asks a question in English, the agent should stay in Spanish or switch appropriately. In most cases, the last detected language guides the reply.
• Preview the widget. Embed the widget on a test page and set your browser’s language preference to a target language. The widget’s initial greeting should appear in that language, and subsequent answers should follow suit.

Agent responds in English when you expect Spanish.
You likely haven’t uploaded documents in Spanish, or the document’s language wasn’t recognised. Check the knowledge base: if the file is present, try re-uploading it with a clear language name in the filename. If you have many files, use the language-tagging option in document settings.

Answers sound like machine-translated text instead of approved medical language.
This happens when you upload only English source documents and let the agent translate on the fly. For clinical trial recruitment, always add native-language content. Regulatory bodies require precise terminology – machine translations can introduce errors. Provide each language’s materials directly, and Chatref will ground its answers in those documents.

Single document contains multiple languages, causing confusion.
Split the document into one file per language. For instance, a bilingual PDF might confuse the agent’s retrieval, causing it to pull snippets from the wrong language. After splitting, re-upload the files separately.

Fallback to default language occurs even when content exists in the target language.
Ensure the multilingual setting is enabled and saved. If you recently added new language documents, wait a moment for indexing to complete, then test again. If the problem persists, confirm the document’s text is renderable (scanned PDFs without OCR won’t work).

Widget doesn’t detect the visitor’s language until they type.
Chatref’s widget uses browser language detection for the initial greeting. If you want a fully native first interaction, verify your test page’s HTML has the correct lang attribute. However, the agent can still recognise the language from the first few words the visitor types, so the conversation will correct itself quickly.

What causes multilingual clinical trial recruitment problems for Clinical Trial Sites & CROs?

Inconsistent or incomplete content across languages is the most common issue. When each language’s recruitment materials sit in separate, siloed systems, sites struggle to answer candidate questions quickly. Staff end up translating on the fly or directing candidates to generic, English-only resources, which slows enrollment and reduces trust. Without a single, language-aware knowledge base, cross-border recruitment feels fragmented and high‑touch.

How do I improve multilingual clinical trial recruitment for Clinical Trial Sites & CROs?

Add all recruitment content – in every target language – to a unified knowledge base, and let a multilingual agent like Chatref handle candidate questions instantly. The agent answers from your own approved documents, so every candidate gets the same consistent, accurate detail in their language. You’ll reduce translation workload on your team, avoid regulatory slip‑ups from improvised replies, and keep candidates engaged at every step of the recruitment funnel.