Some Insights from My Experience Translating Articles with AI
My Experience Using AI for Article Translation
This guide summarizes my process and key insights for achieving high-quality translations using AI tools.
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Core Principles
- The best translation is essentially a rewrite — aiming to convey ideas naturally, not word-for-word.
- Quality improves through multiple steps — translation, proofreading, and polishing.
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Translation Scenarios
✅ Regular Translation
For everyday content, a single rewrite pass by a modern large language model — especially tools like Gemini 3 Pro — often produces satisfactory results.
🔍 Professional-Grade Translation
For important or high-visibility content:
- Perform translation first
- Follow with proofreading
- End with polishing
💡 Avoid combining all three steps in a single prompt, except for very short content.
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Why Keep Steps Separate?
Even though large AI models can handle long inputs, quality often declines with very long outputs and may lead to omissions or hallucinations.
Example: A 2,000-word source rewritten, proofed, and polished in one go could reach 5,000–6,000 words, straining the model and degrading accuracy.
Best practice: run translation, proofreading, and polishing in separate passes.
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Recommended Workflow
Step 1 – Translation
- Use a straightforward prompt with a rewrite instruction
- Specify:
- Article style
- Common glossary terms
- Target audience (optional)
Step 2 – Proofreading
- Provide both the original and the translated text
- Check for:
- Omissions
- Meaning distortions
- Factual errors
- If high precision isn’t needed, you can skip this step
Step 3 – Polishing
- Focus only on the translation (no source text needed)
- Ensure:
- Natural sentence fluency
- Alignment with target language expression habits
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Handling Long Articles
Splitting Content
- Break into natural sections or paragraphs
- Paragraph-level segmentation usually works well
Maintaining Continuity
- When processing each new segment, include the previous segment’s original and translated text
- Helps sustain consistent tone and style
How Much Past Content to Carry?
- Usually only the immediate previous segment is necessary
- Larger carryover can be considered for highly stylistic pieces
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Implementation Options
- API automation for streamlined workflow
- Manual copy-paste into different AI prompts (or Gems in Gemini)
Personally, I create separate prompts for each stage (translation, proofreading, polishing) and run segments through the proper one.
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Bonus: Cross-Platform Publishing & Monetization
If you plan to translate and publish AI-generated content across multiple platforms, consider open-source tools like AiToEarn官网.
AiToEarn enables:
- AI content creation
- Publishing to: Douyin, Kwai, WeChat, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, YouTube, Pinterest, X (Twitter)
- Integrated analytics and AI model ranking
Resources:
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Would you like me to add a sample AI translation prompt for each of the three steps so this guide becomes directly usable without extra setup? That would make it practical for immediate adoption.