# Translate post with AI and save translation
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/translate-post-with-ai-and-save-translation/398950
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** translation, ai
**Created:** [March 21, 2026, 8:23am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/translate-post-with-ai-and-save-translation/398950 "2026-03-21T08:23:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Shauny](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Shauny)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2026, 8:23am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/translate-post-with-ai-and-save-translation/398950/1 "2026-03-21T08:23:44Z")
We had a ‘speak your own language day’ on our forum. We don’t want it to automatically translate everything because AI translations aren’t perfect, but I did use the AI translate a lot during that day.
I found that highlighting the text of the post and clicking “Ask AI” then “Translate to English” was a bit fiddly, especially on mobile. Can’t we add a “translate” button onto a post, either under the “…” menu or automatically when a language is detected?
It also made me think - if I use AI to translate a post to English, and so do 100 other people, that’s 100 uses of the API which costs money… why don’t we have a way to save the English version to the post automatically after 1 person has translated it?
Then it can show a button to switch to English or read in the original language.
I think this would be a really useful feature!
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2026, 8:33am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/translate-post-with-ai-and-save-translation/398950/2 "2026-03-21T08:33:47Z")
> [@Shauny](#):
>
> why don’t we have a way to save the English version to the post automatically after 1 person has translated it?
I suggested something like this too in [Saving translations by AI-helper as content localization](https://meta.discourse.org/t/saving-translations-by-ai-helper-as-content-localization/397477)
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2026, 4:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/translate-post-with-ai-and-save-translation/398950/3 "2026-03-21T16:43:34Z")
> [@Shauny](#):
>
> We don’t want it to automatically translate everything because AI translations aren’t perfect, but I did use the AI translate a lot during that day.
>
> I found that highlighting the text of the post and clicking “Ask AI” then “Translate to English” was a bit fiddly, especially on mobile. Can’t we add a “translate” button onto a post, either under the “…” menu or automatically when a language is detected?
Here you are kinda fighting against the specific system we created to address this UX nightmare of having to invoke translations manually.
Your site could have enabled the automatic translation for the day of the event, and users could then opt-in or out of the automatic translations with the toggle we add on all topics when the feature is enabled.
> [@Shauny](#):
>
> It also made me think - if I use AI to translate a post to English, and so do 100 other people, that’s 100 uses of the API which costs money… why don’t we have a way to save the English version to the post automatically after 1 person has translated it?
That is why we built the automatic translation to cover this exact inefficiency.
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### Author:  [@Shauny](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Shauny)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2026, 6:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/translate-post-with-ai-and-save-translation/398950/4 "2026-03-21T18:20:49Z")
Well the event was all around celebrating the diversity of cultures and languages we have on the site, and it was _meant_ to add a little bit of friction. So just automatically translating everything is not what we’re going for.
I just thought there are some ways to improve the per-post translating.
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### Author:  [@Eilgnaw](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Eilgnaw)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2026, 5:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/translate-post-with-ai-and-save-translation/398950/5 "2026-03-22T05:17:57Z")
I think this approach is great.