Language & locale

thola is built for South Asian businesses, which means it speaks more than one language — and switches between them inside the same team without losing meaning.

There are two settings that matter here:

1. Your UI language — the language thola talks to you in.
2. Your workspace locale — currency, date format, working week, tax regime.

They are independent. Your Tamil-speaking accountant and your Hindi-speaking sales lead can be in the same workspace, see the same data, and have the agents reply to each of them in their own language.

Supported languages

Kannada (kn) and Malayalam (ml) are supported on thola mobile but not yet in the web app. Web parity is on the roadmap for the next release.

How to change your UI language

There are three places you can change it:

• First launch — thola detects your browser language and offers it.
• Profile → Preferences → Language — the canonical setting.
• Bottom-left language toggle on the login page — for switching before signing in.

The preference is saved in your browser (ui_lang key) and on the server, so it follows you across devices.

How translation works inside chat

When two people in the same workspace use different languages, thola does not just pipe one through a translator. It keeps:

• Raw text — what was actually typed, in the original language
• Tone vector — the emotional intent (urgent, frustrated, casual, formal)
• Translation cache — per-display-language renders, generated on demand

So when a Hindi-speaking manager writes:

"Bhai yeh order kal tak nahi gaya toh client gussa ho jaayega."

A Tamil-speaking ops lead sees, in their own language, a translation that preserves the urgency — not a dry literal pass. The tone vector is what makes the difference.

How currency works

The currency for a workspace is set during company setup and locked to your country. Today thola supports:

• INR ₹ (default for India)
• USD $
• AED د.إ
• SGD S$

Money is always stored in the smallest unit of the workspace currency. The UI formats it for the locale of the viewer — so a Bengali viewer sees ১,৫০,০০০ টাকা while an English viewer sees ₹1,50,000.

How dates and the working week work

Set under Settings → Workspace → Locale:

• Date format — DD-MM-YYYY (default), YYYY-MM-DD, MM/DD/YYYY
• Week start — Sunday, Monday, Saturday
• Working days — defaults to Mon–Sat for India; per-workspace override
• Timezone — IST is the default; pick yours from the standard list

The Process module's cycle-time calculations and the Team module's attendance scoring both depend on these settings — get them right early.

Help content is also localised

When you tap Help on a screen, thola serves you the help article in the language you've chosen — including troubleshooting steps. The help index is shipped with the app and works offline.

Common questions

Can I write in one language and have thola reply in another? Yes. Set your Reply language under Profile → Preferences. The Planner will reply in that language regardless of what you typed.

Will customer-facing artifacts (invoices, emails) use my language? No. Customer-facing artifacts default to the customer's language if you've recorded one. Otherwise they use English. The agents will always show you a preview before sending.

My language isn't listed yet. Tell us via Contact support. We add languages when there's enough demand from active workspaces.

→ Next: Core concepts — the small vocabulary you'll see throughout the rest of the guide.