Help Needed to Improve Japanese Translation Quality

Question

I'm using Azure Text Translator to translate English text into Japanese, but the results are not accurate. Could you please suggest how to improve the translation quality?

Here are some issues I'm facing:

Incorrect context in some translations

1. Extra or unnecessary words being added - for example, translating S40 to S40の

Unnatural translation – for example, “LHD” remains the same, but “RHD” is translated as "右ハンドル" (full form)

Answer 1

Hi Aparna

using Azure AI Translator for initial translation and then verifying the output with a Large Language Model (LLM) like OpenAI, before storing it. This hybrid workflow is increasingly popular for multilingual applications where custom training data is limited.

1. Translate with Azure AI Translator

Use the Azure Translator Text API or Document Translation API to translate content. It supports over 130 languages and retains document structure for files like Word and PDF.

• You can integrate it via REST API or SDK.
• It supports language detection, transliteration, and custom glossaries.
• For documents, use Azure Blob Storage to manage source and target files

2. Verify with OpenAI

Once translated, pass the original and translated text to an OpenAI model (e.g., GPT-4) and ask it to:

• Evaluate translation quality.
• Suggest corrections or improvements.
• Flag cultural or contextual mismatches.

3. Store Verified Output

After verification:

• Store the final translation in Azure Blob Storage or Cosmos DB.
• Optionally, log the verification feedback for audit or retraining purposes.

Kindly refer below link: document-translation-flow

Thank You.

Answer 2

hi Aparna, thanks for posting this question

be sure u're using the latest api version. sometimes older versions have quirks. check the azure translator api docs https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/translator/ for updates. also, try enabling the 'sentence length' and 'include alignment' options - they help with context accuracy.

azure's custom translator feature https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/translator/custom-translator/overview is gold one for fixing those industry-specific terms like 'LHD' and 'RHD'. u can train it with your own glossaries. yes it takes some setup but wow does it make a difference ))

see those extra particles like 'の' popping up? classic machine translation issue. the fix? pre-process your text with simple regex to handle known patterns. something like

text = text.replace(/(S\d+)の/g, '$1');

if your source text has hidden formatting. tools like notepad++ can show invisible characters that mess with translations. this might help in other tools too )

and about '右ハンドル' - that's actually correct japanese for RHD... but if u need the acronym, force it by adding 'RHD' to your custom dictionary. worth looking into how other localization teams handle automotive terms https://www.jat.org/glossary.php super useful resource!

remember to break long sentences before translating. japanese has very different sentence structure so shorter inputs often give cleaner outputs. aha and don't forget to set the 'contentType' parameter to 'plain' if you're dealing with codes like S40....

Let me know how at the end u solve that..

rgds,

Alex