Feedback: guides-automatic-language-detection-route-default-language

Documentation Feedback

Original URL: https://www.assemblyai.com/docs/guides/automatic-language-detection-route-default-language
Category: guides
Generated: 05/08/2025, 4:43:57 pm

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Claude Sonnet 4 Feedback

Generated: 05/08/2025, 4:43:56 pm

Technical Documentation Analysis & Improvement Recommendations

Overall Assessment

This documentation covers a useful workflow but has several clarity and completeness issues that could cause user confusion and implementation errors.

Critical Issues & Recommendations

1. Missing Context & Prerequisites

Issues:

• No explanation of what Automatic Language Detection is or when to use it
• Missing information about language_confidence values and their meaning
• No guidance on choosing appropriate confidence thresholds

Recommendations:

## What is Automatic Language Detection?

Automatic Language Detection analyzes your audio and identifies the spoken language with a confidence score (0.0 to 1.0). When the confidence falls below your threshold, you may want to fallback to a known default language rather than risk inaccurate transcription.

**Use cases:**
- Mixed-language environments where one language predominates
- Customer service scenarios with occasional non-native speakers
- Applications requiring minimum accuracy guarantees

## Understanding Confidence Scores
- **0.9-1.0**: Very high confidence (recommended threshold: 0.8-0.9)
- **0.7-0.9**: Good confidence (recommended threshold: 0.6-0.7)
- **0.5-0.7**: Moderate confidence (recommended threshold: 0.4-0.5)
- **Below 0.5**: Low confidence (consider manual review)

2. Incomplete Code Examples

Issues:

• JavaScript code has incomplete error handling and recursion issues
• Python code structure is inconsistent between setup and execution
• Missing complete, runnable examples

Improved JavaScript Example:

import { AssemblyAI } from "assemblyai";

const client = new AssemblyAI({
  apiKey: "YOUR_API_KEY",
});

const default_language = "en"; // English as fallback
const audio_url = "https://example.org/audio.mp3";
const language_confidence_threshold = 0.8;

async function transcribeWithFallback(audioUrl, defaultLang, threshold) {
  let params = {
    audio: audioUrl,
    language_detection: true,
    language_confidence_threshold: threshold,
  };

  try {
    console.log("Starting transcription with automatic language detection...");
    let transcript = await client.transcripts.transcribe(params);

    if (transcript.status === "error") {
      if (transcript.error.includes("below the requested confidence threshold")) {
        console.log(`Language confidence too low. Retrying with ${defaultLang}...`);

        // Retry with default language
        params = {
          audio: audioUrl,
          language_code: defaultLang,
          language_detection: false,
          // Remove confidence threshold for default language run
        };

        transcript = await client.transcripts.transcribe(params);
      } else {
        throw new Error(`Transcription failed: ${transcript.error}`);
      }
    }

    console.log(`✅ Transcript ID: ${transcript.id}`);
    console.log(`Detected/Used Language: ${transcript.language_code || defaultLang}`);
    console.log(`Confidence: ${transcript.language_confidence || 'N/A (default language used)'}`);
    console.log(`Text: ${transcript.text}`);

    return transcript;

  } catch (error) {
    console.error("❌ Error:", error.message);
    throw error;
  }
}

// Execute
transcribeWithFallback(audio_url, default_language, language_confidence_threshold)
  .then(result => console.log("Transcription completed successfully"))
  .catch(error => console.error("Final error:", error));

3. Structural Improvements

Current structure issues:

• Information scattered throughout
• No clear workflow overview
• Missing troubleshooting section

Recommended structure:

# Route to Default Language if Language Confidence is Low

## Overview
[Brief description and use cases]

## How it Works
[Step-by-step workflow diagram]

## Prerequisites
[Requirements and setup]

## Quick Start
[Minimal working example]

## Complete Implementation
[Full code examples with error handling]

## Configuration Options
[Parameter details and recommendations]

## Troubleshooting
[Common issues and solutions]

## Best Practices
[Optimization tips]

4. Missing Critical Information

Add these sections:

## Configuration Parameters

| Parameter | Type | Description | Default | Required |
|-----------|------|-------------|---------|----------|
| `language_detection` | boolean | Enable automatic language detection | false | Yes* |
| `language_confidence_threshold` | float | Minimum confidence (0.0-1.0) | none | No |
| `language_code` | string | Fallback language code | none | Yes** |

*Required when using automatic detection
**Required when retrying with default language

## Supported Language Codes
Common codes: `en` (English), `es` (Spanish), `fr` (French), `de` (German)
[Full list of supported languages →](link)

## Error Messages
- `"below the requested confidence threshold value"` - Language confidence too low
- `"language_detection failed"` - Could not detect language
- `"unsupported language code"` - Invalid language_code provided

5. User Experience Pain Points

Issues:

• No validation guidance for user inputs
• Missing rate limiting considerations
• No cost implications clearly stated

Improvements:

## Before You Start - Validation Checklist

✅ **Audio URL**: Ensure your audio file is publicly accessible
✅ **API Key**: Verify your API key has transcription permissions
✅ **Language Code**: Use valid ISO language codes
✅ **Threshold**: Set between 0.1-0.9 (0.8 recommended for most use cases)

## Cost Considerations
- ✅ **Free retry**: No charge if first attempt fails due to low confidence
- ⚠️ **Charges apply**: If both attempts succeed, you pay for both
- 💡 **Tip**: Test with sample audio to find optimal threshold

## Rate Limiting
When implementing retries, consider:
- Add delays between requests if processing multiple files
- Monitor your API usage in the dashboard
- Implement exponential backoff for production systems

6. Add Practical Examples

## Real-World Example

```javascript
// Customer service scenario: default to English if detection confidence < 80%
const customerServiceConfig = {
  default_language: "en",
  confidence_threshold: 0.8,
  audio_url: "https://recordings.company.com/call-123.wav"
};

// Multilingual content: lower threshold, Spanish default
const podcastConfig = {
  default_language: "es",
  confidence_threshold: 0.6,
  audio_url: "https://podcast.com/episode-45.mp3"
};

Summary of Key Improvements Needed

1. Add conceptual overview explaining when and why to use this feature
2. Fix code examples with proper error handling and complete implementations
3. Include parameter reference table with validation rules
4. Add troubleshooting section with common error scenarios
5. Provide threshold selection guidance based on use cases
6. Include cost and rate limiting information
7. Add validation checklist to prevent common setup errors
8. Restructure content with clearer information hierarchy

These improvements would transform this from a basic code example into comprehensive, user-friendly documentation that prevents common implementation issues and provides clear guidance for different scenarios.

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