Sakana Translate is Sakana AI's new translation feature inside Sakana Chat, and it is live today for free. It handles bidirectional translation between Japanese, English, and Chinese, and it is built on Namazu, the company's model series specifically adapted for Japanese language and culture. The pitch is simple: most translation tools get the grammar right but miss the tone, and tone is often the whole point.
Three modes, not just a text box
The tool ships with three distinct modes that cover the full workflow of working across languages:
- Translate: Paste up to roughly 5,000 Japanese characters and get a streaming translation in real time. Handles emails, slides, articles, and web pages.
- Proofread: Submit a draft and get it refined for naturalness, politeness, tone, and register. Changes are shown with diff highlighting so you can see exactly what shifted and why.
- Ask: Follow up on any translation result directly in context. Clarify a nuance, request an alternative phrasing, or ask why a particular word was chosen, without leaving the page.
The Ask mode is the most interesting addition from a workflow perspective. It collapses the loop between translator and dictionary into a single interface, which is genuinely useful when you are trying to understand
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