Incorrect language detection and translation

Hi Vincent Ciganik,

Azure Translator uses language detection models under the hood when no from language is specified. These models rely on statistical patterns and common tokens. But:

·   "OK mèsi" is very short.

·   "OK" exists in many languages (including English, Catalan).

·   "mèsi" is close to Spanish/Catalan words (like "merci").

·     Haitian Creole (ht) is a low-resource language and may get misclassified as Catalan (ca) or French (fr).

Solution:

Option1: Specify Source Language Manually

You can bypass automatic language detection by explicitly specifying from=ht (Haitian Creole):

Example REST API Call:

POST https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/translate?api-version=3.0&from=ht&to=en
Content-Type: application/json
Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: YOUR_KEY
Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Region: YOUR_REGION
[
  {"Text": "OK mèsi"}
]

Expected Output:

"translations": [
  {
    "text": "OK thanks",
    "to": "en"
  }
]

Option2: Use language endpoint first (for more context)

If you cannot hardcode the source language, use this two-step process:

1. Detect language using a longer text sample when available.
2. Then pass that detection to translation.

Language Detection Call:

POST https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/detect?api-version=3.0
Content-Type: application/json
Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: YOUR_KEY
Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Region: YOUR_REGION

[
  {"Text": "OK mèsi anpil pou èd ou"}
]

Then use the detected language in the translation API.

Even Microsoft acknowledges that language detection can be unreliable for short or ambiguous texts—so manual specification is always more reliable when you know the source language.

Please refer below documents:

Language Detection – Azure Translator

Text translation REST API

Translator language support

Hope this helps, do let me know if you have any further queries.

Thank you!

Hi Vincent Ciganik,

Checking back to see if the above suggestion helped in resolving your issue, do let me know if you have any further queries.

Thank you!