// the find
andrewyng/translation-agent
A translate-reflect-improve loop built on top of an LLM, where the model first drafts a translation, then critiques its own output, then revises based on that critique. Andrew Ng's weekend experiment, now released as a demonstration of agentic workflows rather than a production-ready library. Aimed at researchers and developers who want to experiment with LLM-based translation pipelines.
The three-step reflect-and-revise pattern is genuinely useful and transfers well beyond translation — it's a clean, concrete example of self-correction without needing a second model. Glossary injection via prompt is a practical feature that commercial MT systems make awkward. The country/region parameterization (Spanish in Mexico vs. Spain) is a thoughtful touch that matters in real localization work. The README is unusually honest about where this beats and where it loses to commercial offerings.
Effectively hardwired to OpenAI — swapping in another provider requires digging through utils.py rather than passing a client. The test file is nearly empty; there's no meaningful test coverage for a project with 700+ forks that people are building on. No streaming support, so large documents block until the full LLM round-trip completes. Last commit was August 2024 and the issues list is open but unattended — this is an abandoned experiment, not an actively maintained library.