Multilingual Support

Quick summary

Multilingual support lets patients and providers speak in their preferred language during clinical conversations, while Suki automatically generates the final clinical note in English.

Last updated:July 2026

Multilingual support is supported by: Ambient APIs, Mobile SDK, Web SDK (v2.1.1+)

Multilingual support lets patients and speak in their preferred language during clinical conversations, while Suki automatically generates the final in English. This removes the need for manual translation and makes healthcare more accessible to diverse patient populations. When you enable multilingual support for an , you get the following benefits:

Patient comfort: Patients can communicate in their native language, leading to more accurate information sharing
Better care quality: When patients speak in their preferred language, they provide more detailed and accurate information
No translation needed: Clinicians don’t need to translate conversations manually, Suki handles it automatically
EHR compatibility: All notes are generated in English, ensuring compatibility with standard systems
Wider accessibility: Support for 80+ languages makes healthcare more inclusive

How Multilingual improves clinical documentation

Multilingual support improves note quality by capturing the conversation as the patient actually speaks it, then producing documentation in English that your EHR can use.

What you configure	How the note gets better
Multilingual enabled on the ambient session	Patients can speak in their preferred language without losing clinical detail
Automatic language detection and transcription	More of the visit content is captured accurately
English clinical note generation	Notes stay EHR-ready without a separate translation step

When patients speak freely in their preferred language, the source conversation is usually richer and more accurate. Suki turns that into an English clinical note, so documentation quality improves without adding translation work for the clinician.

How Multilingual transcription works

When you enable multilingual support for an ambient session, Suki automatically:

Detects the language spoken during the conversation
Transcribes the audio in the detected language
Translates and processes the conversation content
Generates the clinical note in English

The API returns a lang_id field that identifies which language was detected for each segment of the conversation. This helps you understand what language was spoken during different parts of the session.

How to enable multilingual support

Multilingual support lets patients and providers speak in their preferred language. Suki still generates the clinical note in English. How you turn it on depends on the product you use. Click the tabs below to see the implementation details for your integration path.

Ambient APIs
Web SDK
Mobile SDK

Multilingual support is enabled by default for ambient sessions. You do not need to pass a multilingual field when you create a session. The old multilingual parameter is deprecated.

Create the Ambient Session

Call the Create ambient session API without a multilingual field. Suki enables multilingual processing for the session automatically.

Python

import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://sdp.suki.ai/api/v1/ambient/session/create",
    json={
        # Optional: "ambient_session_id", "encounter_id", "emr_encounter_id"
    },
    headers={
        "sdp_suki_token": "<sdp_suki_token>",
        "sdp_provider_id": "<sdp_provider_id>",
    },
)

if response.status_code == 200:
    session = response.json()
    ambient_session_id = session["ambient_session_id"]
    print(f"Session created: {ambient_session_id}")
else:
    print(f"Failed to create session: {response.status_code}")
    print(response.json())

Refer to Create ambient session for the full request and response.

Stream Audio and End the Session

Stream the encounter audio, then end the session so Suki can generate the English clinical note. Multilingual processing applies for the full session and cannot be changed mid-session.

Read Language Detection from the Transcript

After processing completes, call the transcript API if you need language detection. Each transcript segment can include a lang_id for the language Suki detected.Refer to Get ambient session Transcript and the Language code reference for more details.

Disable Only If Required

If your organization must turn multilingual support off, contact the Suki support team. Do not rely on the deprecated multilingual request field.Refer to Deprecations for the deprecation notice.

The Web SDK enables Multilingual support automatically for ambient sessions. You do not configure a multilingual flag in ambientOptions. Requires Web SDK v2.1.1+.

Initialize and Mount the Web SDK

Initialize authentication and mount the ambient experience as usual. Multilingual processing is already on for the session.Refer to Ambient implementation for mount options and Multilingual sessions for Web SDK behavior.

Capture the Visit in Any Supported Language

Providers and patients can speak in their preferred language during the ambient session. You do not need to select a language in the SDK.

Receive the English Clinical Note

After submit, the Web SDK returns the generated note in English. Handle onNoteSubmit (React) or note-submission:success (JavaScript and React) as usual.Refer to Note management for more details.

On Mobile SDK, Multilingual support is off by default. Set SukiAmbientConstant.kIsMultilingual to true when you create the session if the conversation may include languages other than English. Once set, you cannot change it for that session.

Create the Session with Multilingual Enabled

Pass kIsMultilingual: true in the session info dictionary when you call createSession. Store the returned sessionId for recording and session-level content retrieval.

Swift

let sessionInfo: [String: AnyHashable] = [
    SukiAmbientConstant.kSessionId: encounterId, // Optional Session Group ID
    SukiAmbientConstant.kIsMultilingual: true
]

SukiAmbientCoreManager.shared.createSession(
    with: sessionInfo,
    onCompletion: { result in
        switch result {
        case .success(let sessionResponse):
            let sessionId = sessionResponse.sessionId
            // Store sessionId for recording and content retrieval
            print("Session created successfully: \(sessionId)")
        case .failure(let error):
            print("Error creating session: \(error)")
        }
    }
)

Refer to Create session for session info parameters.

Set Clinical Context and Record

Call setSessionContext(with:) as needed, then start recording. Capture the visit in the patient’s preferred language. End the session when capture is complete so note generation can run.

Retrieve the English Clinical Note

After processing completes, retrieve content with content(for:). The generated clinical note is in English even when the conversation was in another language.Refer to Session status and content retrieval for more details.

For Ambient APIs and Web SDK, multilingual support is on by default. For Mobile SDK, set kIsMultilingual to true when you create the session. In all products, the setting applies to the entire session and cannot be changed mid-session.

Supported languages for Multilingual support

Suki supports over 80 languages for Multilingual ambient sessions. Refer to the table below to see the languages currently supported:


Spanish	Norwegian	Macedonian	Kazakh	Yoruba
Italian	Finnish	Hungarian	Icelandic	Telugu
English	Vietnamese	Tamil	Marathi	Khmer
Portuguese	Thai	Hindi	Maori	Malayalam
German	Slovak	Estonian	Swahili	Lao
Japanese	Greek	Urdu	Armenian	Punjabi
Polish	Czech	Latvian	Belarusian	Gujarati
Russian	Croatian	Slovenian	Nepali	Somali
Dutch	Danish	Azerbaijani	Occitan	Bengali
Indonesian	Tagalog	Hebrew	Lingala	Georgian
Catalan	Korean	Lithuanian	Maltese	Assamese
French	Romanian	Persian	Tajik	Mongolian
Turkish	Bulgarian	Welsh	Luxembourgish	Myanmar
Swedish	Galician	Serbian	Hausa	Shona
Ukrainian	Bosnian	Afrikaans	Uzbek	Amharic
Malay	Arabic	Kannada	Pashto	Sindhi
Chinese (Cantonese)	Chinese (Mandarin)

Language code reference

Pick a Letter below to show languages starting with that letter, then use the table to map each lang_id to its corresponding language. This helps you interpret the language codes returned by the Transcript API.

We regularly update this list as we add support for new languages. If a language is not included in this table, it is not yet supported.

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
afrikaans	af
amharic	am
arabic	ar
armenian	hy
assamese	as
azerbaijani	az

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
belarusian	be
bengali	bn
bosnian	bs
bulgarian	bg

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
catalan	ca
chinese	zh
chinese_cantonese	yue
chinese_mandarin	cmn
croatian	hr
czech	cs

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
danish	da
dutch	nl

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
english	en
estonian	et

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
finnish	fi
french	fr

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
galician	gl
georgian	ka
german	de
greek	el
gujarati	gu

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
hausa	ha
hebrew	he
hindi	hi
hungarian	hu

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
icelandic	is
indonesian	id
italian	it

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
japanese	ja

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
kannada	kn
kazakh	kk
khmer	km
korean	ko

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
lao	lo
latvian	lv
lingala	ln
lithuanian	lt
luxembourgish	lb

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
macedonian	mk
malay	ms
malayalam	ml
maltese	mt
maori	mi
marathi	mr
mongolian	mn
myanmar	my

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
nepali	ne
norwegian	no

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
occitan	oc

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
pashto	ps
persian	fa
polish	pl
portuguese	pt
punjabi	pa

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
romanian	ro
russian	ru

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
serbian	sr
shona	sn
sindhi	sd
slovak	sk
slovenian	sl
somali	so
spanish	es
swahili	sw
swedish	sv

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
tagalog	tl
tajik	tg
tamil	ta
telugu	te
thai	th
turkish	tr

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
ukrainian	uk
urdu	ur
uzbek	uz

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
vietnamese	vi

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
welsh	cy

Language	Language ID (`lang_id`)
yoruba	yo

Best practices

Enable when needed: Only enable multilingual support when you expect conversations in multiple languages. This optimizes performance.
Set patient language preference: If you know the patient’s preferred language, you can display this information in your UI to help providers prepare.
Monitor language detection: Use the lang_id from transcripts to understand language usage patterns in your application.
Test with your languages: Verify multilingual support works correctly with the languages your patients commonly use.
Note language in UI: Consider displaying the detected language in your UI so providers know what language was spoken.

Use these APIs to work with multilingual support:

Get Session Transcript

Retrieve transcripts with language detection information (lang_id)

Create Session

Create ambient sessions. Multilingual support is enabled by default

Get Started

Concepts & Feature Guides

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FAQs & Support

Multilingual Support

How Multilingual improves clinical documentation

How Multilingual transcription works

How to enable multilingual support

Supported languages for Multilingual support

Language code reference

Best practices

Get Session Transcript

Create Session

​How Multilingual improves clinical documentation

​How Multilingual transcription works

​How to enable multilingual support

​Supported languages for Multilingual support

​Language code reference

​Best practices

​Related APIs

Get Session Transcript

Create Session

How Multilingual improves clinical documentation

How Multilingual transcription works

How to enable multilingual support

Supported languages for Multilingual support

Language code reference

Best practices

Related APIs