Learn how to turn on the new AI-powered engine for Smart Translations, available as a beta. It produces more accurate, natural, and brand-appropriate translations than the previous engine, with better handling of context, tone, and the specific terms that matter to your business.

The beta engine is **opt-in** — you choose when to turn it on, and you can switch back to the previous engine at any time.

Before you begin

The beta engine is available to all Smart Translations customers. It's opt-in, so it won't change anything until you enable it.

If you haven't already, learn the basics of how to enable Smart Translations.

This article covers only the new engine.

How the beta engine works

The previous engine translated each piece of text on its own, without awareness of the message around it. That's fast, but it can miss brand voice, product names, and the intent of the broader content.

The beta engine adds an AI quality layer on top of that baseline. For each piece of content, it:

1. Protects what shouldn't change. Links, brand and product names, discount codes, and personalization tags like {{ first_name }} are locked so they can't be translated or broken.
2. Translates with full context. Instead of translating fragments in isolation, it considers the whole message so word choices stay consistent and natural.
3. Adapts the tone. It matches formality to the content — for example, choosing the right level of formality in languages like German that require it — so a playful promo and a transactional notice each sound appropriate.
4. Checks the result. Each translation is reviewed for safety, tone, and formatting so errors are caught before they reach your customers.

The result is translations that read more naturally, preserve your meaning and voice, and require fewer manual edits.

Enable the beta engine

1. Go to Settings → Translation → Enablement.
2. Under Machine Translation Engine, select Beta (MT v2).
3. Click Save.

To switch back, return to the same screen and select the original engine.

What to expect

• Your workflow is the same. You translate campaigns and flows exactly as you do today — only the engine that produces the translations changes. There's nothing to rebuild.
• It applies going forward. Content you translate after enabling uses the improved engine. Translations and workflows you've already set up are untouched — nothing you've built is removed.
• You can switch back anytime. The engine selection is fully reversible, and switching back doesn't change content you've already translated.
• Translating can take a little longer. The beta engine does extra work to refine and quality-check each translation, so generating one may take longer than the previous engine — especially for long or complex emails, or when translating into many languages at once. This is expected.
• You keep full editing control. You can review and edit any translation directly in Klaviyo, exactly as you do today.
• It's a beta. You may occasionally notice small quirks while we continue refining the experience. If anything ever looks wrong, you can edit the translation directly, and our team is here to help.

Known limitations

Because the engine is still in beta, there are a few things to keep an eye on. We recommend previewing your translated content before sending, especially when:

• Sending very large or complex emails. Long, heavily formatted messages can occasionally drop a section of content during translation. Review the translated version against your original before sending.
• Checking formality. In languages that distinguish formal and informal address, short text like subject lines, or messages that mix formal and casual tones, may occasionally use the wrong level of formality. Adjust any that don't match your brand voice.

As always, you can edit any translation directly in Klaviyo before it sends.

Share your feedback

Because this is a beta, your input genuinely shapes the final product. As you work with translated content, let us know about anything that looks off, awkward, or could be phrased better in your target languages — the more specific the example, the more it helps us fine-tune the engine before general release.

You can share feedback by reaching out to your Account Manager.

Additional resources