Translation option of AI Helper in combination with non-English interface language

I just had coincidentally set my interface language to German, and after a long time, I also used the “translate to English” option of the helper in the composer again. Unfortunately, in this combination, it “translates” my German text into German. That was not very helpful :frowning:

This raises two questions for me:

  1. Is this intentional? While a translation into the language chosen by the user is certainly very helpful when reading other people’s posts, it seems to me to be a hindrance when replying.
  2. Is it an error in the translation that I am shown “Übersetze ins Englische”? Because, after all, it is translated to German.
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This is certainly a bug in translation. @gerhard how do we flag translators not to do the literal translation of “Translate into English”?

It is indeed intentional, we are trying to match interface language. I think you could use the custom instructions if you prefer some other language?

The image shows a translation interface or tool with options to translate text between different languages, such as translating to Urdu or English, explaining the translation, or proofreading the text. (Captioned by AI)

This image displays an Urdu translation of some text, along with "Cancel" and "Copy" buttons below the translated text. (Captioned by AI)

As I said it is helpful when I can translate text on the forum into my interface language easily. But I still don’t get the use case in the context of composing a post.

When I select German as my interface language, I assume I speak German quite well. Why do I need to use AI to translate the text I have written myself in a foreign language to German? I could just write it in German myself. It would be more helpful if I was able to translate the text I have written in a language I prefer (e.g. German) into the default language of the forum.
At the moment, when I set my interface language to German, even proofreading translates my whole post to German. I appreciate the opportunity to have my text proofread by the AI. But I need support writing English, even when my interface is in German. I don’t think you would like if I would post in German. That’s why I changed the language back to English immediately. This is definitely easier for me than having to formulate a custom prompt every time. Custom promts often add additional comments by the bot into the post, which I have to delete afterwards. That’s why I like the default ones, usually the bot does not add comments there.

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You could add a comment in the locale file which shows up as context for translators.

I agree with Moin. I think the problem is that we have two different use cases, but try to use the same functionality.

  • Reading: I’m reading a post that’s not written in my first language. In that case, it makes sense to use AI to translate into my interface language (German).

  • Writing: I’m writing a post in my first language (German) and want AI to translate it into the default locale (English) of the forum, or the language of the post[1] I’m replying to.

Proofreading definitely shouldn’t change the language of the post I’ve written. That’s simply wrong.


  1. That post might have a language that’s different from my first language and the default locale. ↩︎

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@Moin any chance you can make a pr to add the comment, will look more carefully at proofreading but I think we tried to prompt engineer it to keep the language

I beg to differ :slight_smile:
While I understand the point, there are multiple use cases.

In our German forum, we want to use AI translations from English to German for our commercial/sponsor accounts. Some of them don’t have native German speakers and would like to be able to create posts.

like this?

What happens when there is no translation available for the user’s interface language? I think the default “Translate to English” would be shown in that case. What does AI do in this situation? Will it translate to English or will it translate to the user’s locale.
Then maybe something like “Translate to %{language}” would be more helpful

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I think we agree.

You intend to translate the text which was written in the composer into your forum’s default language, don’t you? That’s what I would like to do as well. But at the moment, the text is translated into the locale the user chose. So if your sponsors use your forum in English, the AI Helper will offer “Translate to English”.

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Ah ok, thx for clarification! Then obviously in an ideal world it would be a separate setting to choose target languages for AI translation.

Also, on bigger English speaking forums often you will find language-specific categories as well, so that would be another use case

This is certainly a good idea. @keegan how complicated is it to change this? I think we already have all languages translated properly so we can pass in Deutsch for “language” in German.

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The language setting in the preferences offers them:

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It should be fairly easy to pass the translated language and replace the string with “Translate to %{language}”. However, we use the same CompletionPrompt called translate which is used in both the post AI helper and the composer AI helper.

If we want the functionality to be:

  • Post Helper: Translates to Interface Locale
  • Composer Helper: Translates to Site locale

it would be a little bit more work (though still doable) as we should probably create a separate CompletionPrompt for each post/composer. Easier would be to have the same (i.e. both translate to interface locale).

I can push an update, which one do we prefer?

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This feels correct :+1: @Falco ?

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counter example though is this:

https://discourse.mozilla.org/c/communities/webvr-zh/233

Multi lingual forums need special behavior. I think keeping consistently to interface locale is probably the safest thing to do by default.

Long term maybe we can add an option to categories to specify primary locale, or my dream of… I know Italian … I only see Italian absolutely everywhere, I write in Italian, I read in Italian, I search in Italian.

Why do multilingual forums need special behavior? I think in general they work the same:
We assume that the user chooses an interface language they speak well. So while reading, it is helpful to offer translating into the interface language.

But I think it is less likely the user needs help translating the text they wrote in the composer into their preferred language. It is more likely that they have written a text in their preferred language and need help translating it into a foreign language. They can use a custom prompt to choose any language they need.

I think offering the forum’s default language will be the best default option. Usually not everything is offered in multiple languages. I have the impression that even in multilingual forums, often most of the activity takes place in the default language. When I look at the category stats at https://forum.arduino.cc/, ~80 topics were posted in the international category in the last week but ~400 topics in the other categories. In addition, general topics, for example in the Meta category, which are relevant for everyone, are often discussed in the default language.

That’s why I think the default forum language could be a good default for writing in multilingual forums too. @gerhard’s suggestion to offer translation to the language of the post I’m replying to would be even better, but I expect that to be much more complex.

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Fine, the stakes seem low enough

@keegan feel free to go with your suggestion

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Es funktioniert! → It works splendidly!

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I know this is solved, some way, but I’m still confused what just happened.

I upgraded one hour ago. The forum is using Finnish and tells it using right locale, I assume. Now:

  • post helper offers translation to English, and that is somehow logical, but not sure how usefull
  • composer helper offers translation to Finnish, and that is almost everytime totally useless*

So, an end-user-level solution would be hide translation option totally, because it is not helping almost ever. Or should I consider this other way?

The text will update when translations are merged. Currently, it still shows “translate to English” because the translation was not replaced by “Translate to %{language}”. Although it displays “English,” it translates to your interface language as it did before. The old text is misleading.

Which language would be more helpful?