Is ChatGPT good at AI translation?

As artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in content creation and multilingual communication, clients frequently ask how tools such as ChatGPT measure up against professional translation services. While some see it as a shortcut, others wonder whether it might replace human translators altogether. As a translation agency, we believe in assessing new tools with clarity and transparency.

To that end, we decided to go straight to the source. We asked the popular LLM translation tool, ChatGPT, to evaluate its own AI translation capabilities and followed up by testing a real translation. This article presents the results, as well as both the strengths and the limitations, from a professional standpoint.

Q1: How accurate is your translation?

ChatGPT:  My translations are generally accurate for common language pairs like English–Spanish, English–French, or English–German, especially in general or conversational contexts. I can maintain grammar, sentence structure, and tone reasonably well. However, accuracy can vary depending on domain-specific content, the rarity of the language pair, and the complexity of the original sentence.

As a translation agency, we find this assessment to be mostly accurate. ChatGPT translator often handles general content in high-resource language pairs quite well, producing grammatically correct and coherent drafts.

Q2: What are your strengths and limitations when translating between specific languages?

ChatGPT: I perform best with major global languages that appear frequently in training data, such as English, Spanish, French, German, and Chinese. I’m consistent with terminology and grammar in longer texts and can adjust my tone if prompted. However, I sometimes miss cultural nuances, idiomatic expressions, and grammatical features like gender agreement or politeness levels in languages such as Korean, Arabic, or Polish.

These insights echo what we often see in AI-generated drafts: fluent and coherent phrasing but sometimes a lack of sensitivity to audience, context, or cultural expectations.

Q3: What industries do you handle especially well in translation?

ChatGPT:  I’m well-suited for industries where language tends to be clear, repetitive, and non-specialized. These include e-commerce, tourism, customer support, general business communication, and software/app interfaces. In these fields, the vocabulary is often standardized, and I can reliably follow patterns to produce consistent results. I can also manage basic healthcare and financial content when it’s written in plain language. However, for content that involves technical jargon or legal precision, human post-editing is usually recommended.

This is consistent with our experience. Clients in e-commerce or customer support sometimes benefit from using AI ChatGPT translation in their workflows,  but only when the final version is carefully reviewed for terminology, tone, and formatting.

Putting ChatGPT to the Test: A Real Example 

To better understand how these claims hold up in practice, we gave ChatGPT a short paragraph in English and requested a French translation. The text includes tone, implied meaning, and some nuance — typical of what many business clients might need.

Original English Paragraph: “We didn’t expect the meeting to go so well. Everyone shared their ideas openly, and by the end, we had a plan that felt realistic and exciting.”

ChatGPT's French Translation: "Nous ne nous attendions pas à ce que la réunion se passe aussi bien. Tout le monde a partagé ses idées ouvertement, et à la fin, nous avions un plan à la fois réaliste et enthousiasmant."

Our Analysis: This is a strong and idiomatic translation. The expression “Nous ne nous attendions pas à ce que…” is a natural and grammatically correct rendering of “We didn’t expect…”. The sentence structure flows well, the verb tenses are appropriate, and the positive tone of collaboration is preserved. The phrase “un plan à la fois réaliste et enthousiasmant” is a particularly faithful equivalent of the original.

In short, this example demonstrates that ChatGPT performs well with high-resource languages like English and French, particularly in general business contexts where the language is clear and non-specialized.

Where Things Get Tricky

While the example above is impressive, ChatGPT’s performance isn’t always consistent — especially in the following areas:

• Idioms and wordplay: Phrases like “kick the bucket” or “spill the beans” may be translated literally, resulting in a loss of intended meaning.
  
  
• Gendered languages: In languages like French, Italian, or Russian, where grammatical gender affects adjectives, nouns, and pronouns, ChatGPT translator occasionally makes mismatches.
  
  
• Context-heavy content: Without background knowledge, ChatGPT may mistranslate acronyms, brand names, or cultural references.
  
  

For instance:

Original: “She didn’t bat an eye when she saw the price.”
Literal Spanish translation: “Ella no parpadeó cuando vio el precio.”
Correct idiomatic translation: “Ni se inmutó al ver el precio.”

The literal version is grammatically correct, but it loses the idiomatic force, a typical pitfall of machine translation.

ChatGPT vs Human Translators and Other Tools

Compared to traditional tools like Google Translate or DeepL, ChatGPT live translation offers more control over tone and formality — especially when users provide clear prompts. However, it lacks the subject-matter expertise, cultural awareness, and real-world experience that professional translators bring.

For example, a human translator understands that humor may need adaptation or that certain legal or medical phrases have fixed equivalents that shouldn’t be paraphrased.

In our work, we’ve found that ChatGPT translation can be useful for generating first drafts or exploring alternative phrasing. But every AI translation still requires professional post-editing to ensure clarity, accuracy, and appropriateness for the target audience.

So, Can You Trust ChatGPT for Translation?

The short answer: yes — but only for the right context.

As a translation agency, we view ChatGPT as a tool with real potential for speeding up workflows and producing rough drafts, especially for:

• Everyday communications
  
  
• Gisting and quick internal translations
  
  
• Multilingual content creation with human review
  
  

However, for legal documents, technical materials, or content where tone and nuance matter, professional human translation remains essential. The stakes are simply too high to rely on AI translation alone.

As this analysis shows, ChatGPT is a capable tool when used in the right context. It performs well with high-resource language pairs and general content, offering fluent and coherent translations that are suitable for internal communication, early drafts, and exploratory use. Its ability to maintain tone and structure is particularly useful in fields like e-commerce, customer service, and general business.

However, its limitations become apparent in complex or regulated domains, less commonly supported languages, and context-heavy materials. Literal translations, missed idioms, and issues with gender or formality can compromise accuracy and clarity — especially when content is intended for publication or official use.