What translation AI does well and badly
AI translation is very useful for quickly understanding a foreign article or email, or for producing a rough draft before you translate properly. It is also quite good at producing grammatical, natural sentences. But translation is not swapping words; it is carrying a situation across. Who is speaking to whom, and how it will sound in that society, is often not written in the source text, and AI fills those gaps with the most common option. That is where most mismatches come from. So a translation you read to understand something and one you produce to send to someone should be handled differently. The first can be a little awkward; in the second, a single wrong tone can affect a relationship and trust.
Why politeness goes wrong
English uses the same "you" for a close friend and a client's chief executive. Translating into Korean or Japanese means choosing a level of politeness, but the source carries no such information. The result can mix polite and formal registers within one document, or address a senior person in something close to casual speech. Japanese is more complex still, with separate forms for raising the listener and lowering oneself. In the other direction, Korean or Japanese politeness has to be expressed in English through sentence structure rather than particular words, and it often comes out as plain, flat English.
Give it the context first
When asking for a translation, do not paste in the source alone; describe the situation as well. The same sentence should be translated differently depending on who receives it. Putting the information below in front of the text makes the politeness level and tone far more consistent.
- Reader: a client contact you are writing to for the first time, a close colleague, and so on
- Relationship: whether you are asking a favour or giving information
- Formality: official document, work email or chat message
- Tone: "keep the formal register throughout", "polite but not stiff"
- Terms: a list of product names or job titles you have already fixed
Mismatches from cultural context
Sometimes the meaning is right but it sounds odd to the reader. How indirectly people refuse or complain differs between languages, so a literal translation can come across as rude, or so vague the point is lost. Idioms and proverbs translated word for word tend to lose their meaning. Forms of address are another trap: honorific suffixes, the way job titles are used, and the order of family and given names all differ. Conventional parts such as seasonal greetings and sign-offs read more naturally if rewritten in the local style rather than translated.
Checking with back-translation
Translating the result back into the original language helps reveal whether the meaning has gone badly astray. It can catch a negative turned positive or a subject and object swapped. A smooth back-translation does not guarantee a good translation, though, because politeness levels and awkward tone disappear in the round trip. For important text, place source and translation side by side sentence by sentence, and if possible have someone fluent in the language read it once.
Check numbers, names and formats separately
Numbers and proper nouns go wrong surprisingly often. Korean and Japanese group large numbers by ten thousand rather than by thousand, so digits can slip in large amounts, and date order and time notation vary by country. Names of people, companies and places may be translated by meaning or have their spelling changed. After translating, check amounts, dates, quantities, contact details and names against the original one by one. If the reader uses different units, verify any conversions yourself.
Text you should not leave to AI translation
Contracts, terms of service, medical information, legal documents and official papers for government offices or schools are cases where a translation error can mean real loss or disadvantage. Using AI to understand them is fine, but have the final version checked by a professional translator or a specialist in the field. Some recipients require certified or notarised translations, so check their official guidance. And if a document contains personal data or company secrets, first consider whether you may put it into that service at all.
Check before sending
Before actually sending or publishing a translation, confirm the points below. The less time you have, the more these four matter.
- Politeness level and tone are consistent from start to finish
- Numbers, dates, names and units match the original
- Idioms and greetings sound natural in the local style
- Important text has been read once by someone who knows the language
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