When I first started experimenting with generative AI for my Korean-to-English translation work, I wondered if the AI would struggle with Korean, given its unique grammar and structure. But I quickly discovered something fascinating: generative AI doesn’t think about languages the way we humans do.

Here are three quick tips to help you understand and leverage AI translation better:

  1. Remember, generative AI is language agnostic. It doesn’t categorize languages into separate silos like English, Korean, or Arabic. Instead, it sees languages as interconnected networks of meaning. This means it can handle translations across virtually any language pair, provided it has sufficient training data.
  2. Generative AI doesn’t inherently find one language more challenging than another. Instead, its effectiveness depends on the amount and quality of data it has been trained on. The AI forms connections between meanings across languages, allowing it to translate effectively—even between languages that seem vastly different to us.
  3. If your target language isn’t English, you might be concerned about slightly reduced effectiveness due to less available training data for the LLM. However, by writing your prompts and tips directly in your target language, you condition the AI to produce output in that language. Even better, you’re already showing the AI your personal writing style, helping it generate translations that sound more like you—and less like a machine.

In other words, just give it a try! Experimenting with your specific language pair is the best way to see how effectively AI can support your translation work.