Bug: LLM occasionally switches response language from Chinese (Traditional) to Korean or Japanese

Status Fixed / completed
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 3 comments · opened May 8, 2026 · closed May 8, 2026

Bug Description

When the system prompt / CLAUDE.md instructs Claude Code to always respond in 繁體中文台灣用語 (Traditional Chinese - Taiwan), the model occasionally switches to Korean or Japanese instead, without any user instruction to do so.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Set language instruction in CLAUDE.md or system prompt:

\\\
Always respond in 繁體中文台灣用語. Use 繁體中文台灣用語 for all explanations, comments, and communications with the user.
\
\\

  1. Have a long conversation session (especially one involving multi-step coding tasks or context compression).
  2. Observe that at some point Claude Code starts responding in Korean or Japanese instead of Traditional Chinese.

Expected Behavior

Claude Code should consistently respond in Traditional Chinese (繁體中文台灣用語) throughout the entire session, regardless of session length or context compression events.

Actual Behavior

Responses spontaneously switch to Korean or Japanese mid-session. The switch appears to happen more frequently:

  • After context window compression
  • During tasks that involve multi-agent or multi-step workflows
  • When processing code or tool results that contain CJK characters from mixed sources

Environment

  • Tool: Claude Code CLI
  • Language instruction: CLAUDE.md system-level instruction
  • Affected languages observed: Korean (한국어), Japanese (日本語) instead of Traditional Chinese (繁體中文)

Additional Context

This is likely a model-level issue where the language instruction is not robustly maintained when the context contains mixed CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) content, or when context compression occurs. The model may be inferring language from surrounding CJK characters rather than following the explicit instruction.

Workaround

None currently. User must manually remind the model to switch back to Chinese in each affected response.

View original on GitHub ↗

3 Comments

howie · 5 months ago

Concrete Example from Real Session

Here is an actual occurrence. The CLAUDE.md language instruction was set to 繁體中文台灣用語 (Traditional Chinese), but Claude responded entirely in Korean:

---

User asked (in Chinese context):

GitHub App with different permission, they can not merge and delete, right?

Claude responded in Korean instead of Traditional Chinese:

맞아요! GitHub App 권한을 세밀하게 設定할 수 있어요. 설계안:

공통 원칙:
- main branch 에 branch protection 설정 → 아무도 직접 merge/push 불가
- 사람(howie)이 PR review & merge 결정

권한 설계:
│ Contents       │ Read & Write │ Read & Write │ Read only │
│ Pull requests  │ Read & Write │ Read & Write │ Read & Write │
│ Administration │ ❌ 없음      │ ❌ 없음      │ ❌ 없음   │
...(entire response in Korean)

The response should have been entirely in Traditional Chinese. No Korean was present in the user's message that could explain the switch.

---

Related / Duplicate Issues

This appears to be a known recurring issue. Similar reports:

These reports suggest this is a persistent, unresolved model-level issue with CJK language disambiguation when an explicit language instruction is set.

github-actions[bot] · 5 months ago

Found 3 possible duplicate issues:

  1. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/30025
  2. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/46846
  3. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/51686

This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.

  • If your issue is a duplicate, please close it and 👍 the existing issue instead
  • To prevent auto-closure, add a comment or 👎 this comment

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

github-actions[bot] · 3 months ago

This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.