German translations contain translation elements

Falco · July 7, 2026, 7:10pm

Looks like our prompt for translations have a few logic contradictions, proposed a fix here

github.com/discourse/discourse

FIX: Seed translator agent examples as conversation turns (#41526)

main ← fix-translator-agent-example-seeding

merged 02:47PM - 08 Jul 26 UTC

xfalcox

+113 -118

Previously, the translation agents (`PostRawTranslator`, `TopicTitleTranslator`,… and `ShortTextTranslator`) embedded their few-shot examples directly in the system prompt as `Input:`/`Output:` text, where the example inputs were JSON but the outputs were bare text — contradicting the `response_format` that requires a `{"output": "..."}` object. This conflicting guidance caused some models to echo the input wrapper into published translations, e.g. German localizations starting with `{"content":"...` as reported in https://meta.discourse.org/t/german-translations-contain-translation-elements/407009. This change moves the examples to the `examples` hook — which pre-seeds them as real user/model turns in the conversation, like our other agents (`Proofreader`, `LocaleDetector`, `SmartDates`) — with each model turn serialized as `{"output": "..."}` so the examples demonstrate the exact structured output the agent must produce. It also drops the now-unnecessary instruction claiming a bare ASCII `"` would truncate the response (the structured output layer handles escaping), and removes a stray trailing quote that had leaked into the Japanese example.

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German translations contain translation elements

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