Attempted fix: Chat message disappears without response

[Nandini1005]

🔧 Updates Made in This PR

• Fixed Chatbot Not Replying Issue

  • Debugged chat_interface.py so the bot now responds consistently in English.
  • Ensured conversation history saves and displays correctly.
  • Added safe exception handling for errors.

• Added Multilingual Support (In Progress)

  • Integrated deep-translator for bot replies in Indian languages (Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Punjabi).
  • Added a language dropdown in the sidebar for reply selection.
  • Translation works in parts, but currently the bot still replies only in English.
  • I’ll continue fixing this soon — guidance on ensuring translated replies render correctly would be very helpful 🙏.

• Improved Sidebar

  • Added persistence so tone & language selections don’t disappear.
  • Cleaned duplicate sidebar rendering.

❗ Current Issue / Where I’m Stuck

• Background Image Missing
  • The app crashes with FileNotFoundError: 'Background.jpg'.
  • I haven’t modified styles, but it seems the repo expects a file that’s missing.
  • Temporary solution: app runs fine if I comment out the background image line.
  • Need guidance if we should remove the dependency or upload the missing image.

🙏 Request

Please review the latest fixes.
✅ The bot now replies correctly in English.
⚠️ Multilingual replies are partially set up but still not working fully — I’d appreciate guidance to resolve this.
Also need advice on the missing background image issue.

[eccentriccoder01]

Thanks for reaching out with the issue you're facing @Nandini1005.

First off, is this PR connected to Issue #59? If so, please consider linking the two by editing your PR description and mentioning the issue, it helps in some of our GitHub workflows.

Secondly, could you please deploy your PR or latest fork (after fetching the most recent changes from upstream) on Streamlit Cloud and share the working deployment link here? That way, I can test the disappearing message issue directly on your implementation.

For context, I recently tested the main branch locally and on the cloud, and both message input and responses were working as expected. If the issue still persists in your version, I’ll try cloning your fork and reviewing the code to help debug it more closely. Also, please pull some recent changes to resolve the conflicts as some PRs have been merged lately.

Alternatively, if we find that the issue is more complex or tied to something external, we can go ahead and integrate the multilingual support you've been working on and track the message rendering issue separately via a new GitHub issue, whichever works best.

Looking forward to your updates!

[Nandini1005]

Hi @eccentriccoder01,
I’ve updated the PR with the latest fixes:

• Bot now responds correctly in English
• Added sidebar language dropdown & translation logic (multilingual replies still need fixing — would love your guidance here 🙏)
• Background image issue persists (Background.jpg missing). For now, I commented it out.

Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks a lot!

[eccentriccoder01]

Great @Nandini1005, and sorry for the delay, I was caught up since yesterday... Please pull the latest changes and resolve the conflicts, as the main is constantly being updated by a lot of people. Once you've done that, provide a working streamlit cloud deployment link of your updated fork/PR, so I can understand the issues you're facing clearly. Thanks 💙