Prompting for Pragmatics: Improving the Cultural Sensitivity of LLM Translations for Business Emails

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) are rapidly diffusing into multilingual workplaces, where managers and employees rely on them to translate everyday communication. While LLMs can now generate translations with high lexical accuracy, it remains unclear whether they can produce translations that are culturally appropriate for the target audience—an issue central to collaboration in multinational corporations. We analyze the cultural sensitivity of English-to-Japanese LLM translations of workplace emails across three prompting strategies: (1) naïve “just translate” prompts, (2) audience-targeted prompts specifying the recipient’s cultural background and workplace role, and (3) instructional prompts providing explicit guidance on Japanese communication norms. Using a convergent mixed-methods design, Study 1 applies a cross-cultural pragmatics scheme to compare culture-specific language patterns in source texts and translations; Study 2 asks Japanese native speakers to evaluate each translation for perceived appropriateness and intention to comply. We find that naïve prompts yield only limited adaptation toward Japanese language patterns. Audience-targeted prompts produce meaningful improvements, and instructional prompts generate the strongest textual adaptation. However, recipient evaluations reveal a threshold effect: although both culturally informed prompts significantly outperform the naïve baseline, instructional prompts do not produce significantly higher appropriateness or compliance ratings than audience-targeted prompts. Theoretically, we advance language-sensitive international management research by applying cross-cultural pragmatics to LLM-mediated workplace translation and by providing a replicable way to assess the cultural sensitivity of translated workplace communication through both pragmatic adaptation of language patterns and recipient evaluations. We also theorize LLMs as new translating agents in multilingual MNC communication. Practically, our findings show that lightweight audience-targeted prompting can already yield meaningful improvements in the cultural sensitivity of LLM translations.