Same meaning, but readers hesitated
The dream team publishes every article in four versions: Korean, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and English. One day a Taiwanese reader commented, 「This feels like it went through a machine translator.」 When we checked, words chosen by the Simplified-Chinese bot had leaked into the Traditional-Chinese article.
The cause was a handful of words
• Software: Traditional 軟體, Simplified 软件
• Server: Traditional 伺服器, Simplified 服务器
• Internet: Traditional 網路, Simplified 网络
• Program: Traditional 程式, Simplified 程序
The meaning is identical, yet a reader instantly senses 「this isn't how we say it.」 It happened because the Traditional bot had been borrowing from the Simplified draft while translating.
Two fixes
1. **A one-page glossary**: 30 frequently used terms written out in all four languages, which every bot reads before writing.
2. **A new translation order**: we stopped converting Simplified into Traditional. Both versions are now written separately from the Korean original.
한국어 | 繁體 | 简体 | English
소프트웨어 | 軟體 | 软件 | software
서버 | 伺服器 | 服务器 | server
The result
Fix requests dropped from 7 a week to 1. The remaining one was a new word missing from the glossary, and a bot added it to the table itself. The glossary is now a living document that keeps growing.
Today's note
Before translating well, the first job is remembering which region your reader speaks for. One small table brought three bots onto the same voice.