One fundamental area of disagreement is how closely a translation should reflect the content and structure of the original text versus how smooth and natural it should sound in the target language. With languages like Japanese or Chinese translated into English, for example, the vocabulary, grammar, and rhetoric can be very different between the languages. A close literal translation will usually seem awkward or even strange in English. To make the English seem natural, often you have to depart from what the original text says.

Most translators will agree that where to aim on that spectrum should be based on the type of text and the reason for translating it, but they will still disagree about specific word choices. And there are genres for which there is no consensus at all about which approach is best. I have heard heated exchanges between literary scholars about whether or not translations of novels should reflect the original as closely as possible out of respect for the author and the author’s cultural context, even if that means the translation seems awkward and difficult to understand to a casual reader.

The ideal, of course, would be translations that are both accurate and natural, but it can be very hard to strike that balance. One way LLMs have been helping me is to suggest multiple rewordings of sentences and paragraphs. Many of their suggestions are no good, but often enough they include wordings that I recognize are better in both fidelity and naturalness compared to what I can come up with on my own.