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Sounds nice! But, the web ui chat version of flash has very poor language following abilities in my experience: You may ask it something in English, and get a

Sounds nice! But, the web ui chat version of flash has very poor language following abilities in my experience: You may ask it something in English, and get a thinking chain in Chinese with an answer in Chinese, or an English thinking chain and an English answer. Using the retry button on the same question has a 50/50 chance of any of those results. Sometimes, asking something in English, but where information are mostly in another language may make the answer in the language where data has been found. The other day, I asked something about a local German thing, in English, and I got an answer in German instead. It’s as if all the language data stirred it away from the language of the user’s question.

red_green_yell 7d ago
There is a chrome extension that injects “respond in English” and “English [checkbox emoji]” to every query. This helps a lot but I still sometimes get Chinese responses. I have not had this issue via api on openrouter.
swiftcoder 8d ago
I've hit this too, but you can just add "in English" to steer it
- fdsjgfklsfd 7d ago
  No you can't. It still responds in Chinese after explicitly asking it to "Always reason and respond in English."
  - swiftcoder 7d ago
    I've literally only done this once per computer I use the web interface on, and it's always stuck thereafter. I can't speak to the mobile app
- gentlewater 8d ago
  I finally uninstalled the app yesterday after giving it plenty of chances over several months. Yesterday, I asked it whether «DeepSeek has fixed the issue where it erroneously answers in Chinese?» and it answered in Chinese.
  - elaus 7d ago
    So you did not do what the post you replied to suggested?
    - jtbayly 7d ago
      On the contrary, this is very strong steering in a prompt!
    - michimagdesign 7d ago
      This shouldn’t be a user-facing issue. The web UI should inject the account’s language setting or solve it like competitors. They’ve mentioned giving it multiple chances but it’s still not fixed.
      - alightsoul 7d ago
        Anthropic does the same thing but it's not problem
    - gentlewater 7d ago
      Oh, I’ve tried that too. It will promise to keep it in English from here on out, then switch back to Chinese after two or three exchanges. When ever it needs to do a web search, it seems to load so much Chinese text that it forgets any language instructions. Just thought my experience yesterday was more to the point. Right now the chat is absolutely hopeless.
      - swiftcoder 7d ago
        huh. mine only does this on the first turn on a new computer. Once I've told it once it seems to be entirely sticky on that device from then on
el_io 8d ago
I'm also totally not sure why it do that, but I guess because they're searching from China and web results comeback in Chinese so the model start using that.
- kgeist 8d ago
  The web UI's system prompt is also probably in Chinese
epolanski 8d ago
I've occasionally got chinese characters in anthropic/openai's responses too, locally on codex/claude. Hasn't happened in a while, last time was when I was testing fable 5 in june.
- oefrha 8d ago
  I don’t know what model codex uses for session summarization (I use Pro subscription, no third party models), but I get Chinese summaries from time to time, when the only Chinese that could have appeared in the session would be an i18n strings file that it may or may not have loaded. Very puzzling. Last happened yesterday.
apexalpha 8d ago
I have the same issue, sometimes. I initially thought it was a trick, that using Chinese chars is somehow more info dense and it saves tokens to 'think' in Chinese. But later on it became more erratic. I still wonder if token reduction would work that way.
miroljub 8d ago
Yep, the same issue. I even defined a dictionary shortcut on my phone to expand aie to "Answer in English!", but every so often it takes 5 times to force it to switch to English. Interesting though, when I ask questions in German or my native language, I rarely get Chinese answers. Looks like English is most affected. API never answers in Chinese.
tinyhouse 8d ago
I've been working with Pro and it's been great so far.
mattmcal 8d ago
It's not just web chat, V4 Flash 7/31 suffers from a lot of pathological behavior in coding harnesses as well, e.g. infinite loops, hallucinations, premature termination, and invalid tool calls.
- surgical_fire 7d ago
  I used a lot V4 flash to implement plans built by other models, and it was honestly top notch. The thing was a workhorse, and I got none of the isuses you describe. I was mostly using DeepSeek on Pi, connecting to their API directly (not some third party provider). I honestly have more issues steering Sonnet properly.
- anramon 7d ago
  That may be an issue with the harness you are using, i've never, and never heard of, someone having this problem specifically with this model.
- polyglotfacto 7d ago
  disagree; been using flash as my exclusive model (other contributors have used other models) to build a complicated software project, a web engine. See https://github.com/gterzian/formal-web https://github.com/gterzian/formal-web, which as you can see comes with very specific guidance explaining how to implement features. I'm using headless Pi with my own UI and sandbox client, https://github.com/gterzian/uni03C0 https://github.com/gterzian/uni03C0, as well as a bunch of Pi extensions for things like accessing Web standards and browser use via CDP for testing. Switching to 4.1 today... Edit: it seems they pushed the date at which they route the Pro calls to new Flash, so today I ended up paying regular Pro rates thinking I was using the new Flash; an example of how their offering is not quite as predictable as I would like it to be (the other is cache performance being unpredictable).
- CharlesW 8d ago
  FWIW, I haven’t experienced any of that using V4 Flash via DeepSeek in omp. What’s your coding harness and inference provider?
lampe3 7d ago
All flash llms have this problems. gemini. I start to a new chat write in german and suddenly it answers in english. I take the free chat gpt one writ with it in polish suddenly english.
- djeastm 7d ago
  You see this on Reddit where the bot accounts will just comment in German, French or Italian randomly (and other bot accounts responding to it won't even bat an eye, responding in English as if it's the most natural thing in the world)
  - prussia 7d ago
    It's a bit more complicated than that because Reddit now automatically tries to translate comments not in the user's language.
cheema33 7d ago
Yep. I faced the exact same issue. Too many times. And then just gave up.
- vintermann 7d ago
  Very odd. I've used DeepSeek heavily for some weeks, and haven't seen a single Chinese character either in its replies or its thinking. Are you using a quantified model or a different provider by any chance?

red_green_yell 7d ago

There is a chrome extension that injects “respond in English” and “English [checkbox emoji]” to every query. This helps a lot but I still sometimes get Chinese responses. I have not had this issue via api on openrouter.

swiftcoder 8d ago

I've hit this too, but you can just add "in English" to steer it

fdsjgfklsfd 7d ago
No you can't. It still responds in Chinese after explicitly asking it to "Always reason and respond in English."
- swiftcoder 7d ago
  I've literally only done this once per computer I use the web interface on, and it's always stuck thereafter. I can't speak to the mobile app
gentlewater 8d ago
I finally uninstalled the app yesterday after giving it plenty of chances over several months. Yesterday, I asked it whether «DeepSeek has fixed the issue where it erroneously answers in Chinese?» and it answered in Chinese.
- elaus 7d ago
  So you did not do what the post you replied to suggested?
  - jtbayly 7d ago
    On the contrary, this is very strong steering in a prompt!
  - michimagdesign 7d ago
    This shouldn’t be a user-facing issue. The web UI should inject the account’s language setting or solve it like competitors. They’ve mentioned giving it multiple chances but it’s still not fixed.
    - alightsoul 7d ago
      Anthropic does the same thing but it's not problem
  - gentlewater 7d ago
    Oh, I’ve tried that too. It will promise to keep it in English from here on out, then switch back to Chinese after two or three exchanges. When ever it needs to do a web search, it seems to load so much Chinese text that it forgets any language instructions. Just thought my experience yesterday was more to the point. Right now the chat is absolutely hopeless.
    - swiftcoder 7d ago
      huh. mine only does this on the first turn on a new computer. Once I've told it once it seems to be entirely sticky on that device from then on

el_io 8d ago

I'm also totally not sure why it do that, but I guess because they're searching from China and web results comeback in Chinese so the model start using that.

kgeist 8d ago
The web UI's system prompt is also probably in Chinese

epolanski 8d ago

I've occasionally got chinese characters in anthropic/openai's responses too, locally on codex/claude. Hasn't happened in a while, last time was when I was testing fable 5 in june.

oefrha 8d ago
I don’t know what model codex uses for session summarization (I use Pro subscription, no third party models), but I get Chinese summaries from time to time, when the only Chinese that could have appeared in the session would be an i18n strings file that it may or may not have loaded. Very puzzling. Last happened yesterday.

apexalpha 8d ago

I have the same issue, sometimes. I initially thought it was a trick, that using Chinese chars is somehow more info dense and it saves tokens to 'think' in Chinese. But later on it became more erratic. I still wonder if token reduction would work that way.

miroljub 8d ago

Yep, the same issue. I even defined a dictionary shortcut on my phone to expand aie to "Answer in English!", but every so often it takes 5 times to force it to switch to English. Interesting though, when I ask questions in German or my native language, I rarely get Chinese answers. Looks like English is most affected. API never answers in Chinese.

tinyhouse 8d ago

I've been working with Pro and it's been great so far.

mattmcal 8d ago

It's not just web chat, V4 Flash 7/31 suffers from a lot of pathological behavior in coding harnesses as well, e.g. infinite loops, hallucinations, premature termination, and invalid tool calls.

surgical_fire 7d ago
I used a lot V4 flash to implement plans built by other models, and it was honestly top notch. The thing was a workhorse, and I got none of the isuses you describe. I was mostly using DeepSeek on Pi, connecting to their API directly (not some third party provider). I honestly have more issues steering Sonnet properly.
anramon 7d ago
That may be an issue with the harness you are using, i've never, and never heard of, someone having this problem specifically with this model.
polyglotfacto 7d ago
disagree; been using flash as my exclusive model (other contributors have used other models) to build a complicated software project, a web engine. See https://github.com/gterzian/formal-web https://github.com/gterzian/formal-web, which as you can see comes with very specific guidance explaining how to implement features. I'm using headless Pi with my own UI and sandbox client, https://github.com/gterzian/uni03C0 https://github.com/gterzian/uni03C0, as well as a bunch of Pi extensions for things like accessing Web standards and browser use via CDP for testing. Switching to 4.1 today... Edit: it seems they pushed the date at which they route the Pro calls to new Flash, so today I ended up paying regular Pro rates thinking I was using the new Flash; an example of how their offering is not quite as predictable as I would like it to be (the other is cache performance being unpredictable).
CharlesW 8d ago
FWIW, I haven’t experienced any of that using V4 Flash via DeepSeek in omp. What’s your coding harness and inference provider?

lampe3 7d ago

All flash llms have this problems. gemini. I start to a new chat write in german and suddenly it answers in english. I take the free chat gpt one writ with it in polish suddenly english.

djeastm 7d ago
You see this on Reddit where the bot accounts will just comment in German, French or Italian randomly (and other bot accounts responding to it won't even bat an eye, responding in English as if it's the most natural thing in the world)
- prussia 7d ago
  It's a bit more complicated than that because Reddit now automatically tries to translate comments not in the user's language.

cheema33 7d ago

Yep. I faced the exact same issue. Too many times. And then just gave up.

vintermann 7d ago
Very odd. I've used DeepSeek heavily for some weeks, and haven't seen a single Chinese character either in its replies or its thinking. Are you using a quantified model or a different provider by any chance?