What I learned testing AI translation tools in 2026 (DeepL is still good, but LLMs caught up)

Translation used to be a settled question. DeepL was best at European languages, Google Translate was best at coverage, and you picked whichever fit your stack. In 2026 the picture is more interesting, because the big LLMs (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Mistral) now match or beat the specialised tools on the same prompt, with one important catch. I spent a couple of weeks pushing translation tasks through six tools, in five language pairs (Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Polish, all paired with Engl...