Why AI still can't translate South African languages (Updated May 2026) Why AI still can't translate South African languages in 2026 Try it yourself. Open any AI tool — ChatGPT, Google Translate, DeepL — and ask it to translate a few sentences into isiZulu, Sepedi or Xitsonga. Then show the output to a first-language speaker. The reaction is usually the same: disbelief, then a flat "this is completely wrong." This isn't a subtle quality gap. The output is not "good enough for a first draft." The words may look like the language. The structure may resemble a sentence. But the meaning is broken — and any speaker can see it immediately. We've been testing AI translation against South Africa's indigenous languages since these tools became widely available. So have every translator we work with. The results are consistent. The problem isn't just that there's not enough data. It's that most of the data that exists is bad. AI language mo...