Lesson 1: Machine translation for a four-language inbox
63 min read·14 Oct 2026
Module 9 · Lesson 1 · About 50 minutes · Needs: basic Python; Module 4 (the TF-IDF intent model) and Module 7 Lesson 2 (attention) help; no key needed
The situation
It is Monday 2 November 2026, project week 9. Since Tidewell started delivering to Germany, Spain and France on 1 July, about four in ten messages are in German, Spanish or French. Ines reads Spanish. The German and French ones wait, and the intent model scores worst on them.
One message runs through the lesson: HT48 from the hand-written test set (simulated). "Wo ist meine Bestellung TW-122960? Und ich will das LockSure D-lock umtauschen, der Schlüssel klemmt." Its reference translation: "Where is my order TW-122960? And I want to exchange the LockSure D-lock, the key sticks." Ines labels it order_status, with a warranty fault second. Rosa asks: can a free, local translation model make it routable?