The n8n Workflow I Built to Auto-Translate Japanese AI News Into English Every Morning ($0.03/run)

Shoki | Kaizen Automation — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 05:51:13 +0000

Japan's AI scene moves fast — but almost everything is in Japanese.

I built an n8n workflow that runs every morning at 7 AM, scrapes the top Japanese AI news, translates each article using Claude AI, and delivers a clean English briefing to my inbox. Total cost: $0.03 per run.

Here's exactly how I built it.

The Problem

I follow Japanese AI research closely, but manually translating 10+ articles every morning was killing my time. I needed automation.

The Workflow Architecture

Schedule Trigger (7 AM daily)
→ HTTP Request (fetch RSS feeds from Japanese AI sources)
→ Split in Batches (process each article)
→ IF node (filter: published today only)
→ HTTP Request (Claude API - translate + summarize)
→ Code node (parse JSON response, format output)
→ Gmail (send ranked daily briefing)

Key Implementation Details

1. The AI Translation Node

I use Claude's API via HTTP Request node. The prompt is structured to return JSON:

{
  "title_en": "...",
  "summary_en": "...",
  "importance_score": 8,
  "tags": ["LLM", "robotics"]
}

2. Cost Control (Critical)

Before hitting the AI node, I added an IF filter:

Only process articles from the last 24 hours
Max 15 articles per run
Cache results in Google Sheets to skip duplicates

This cut my Claude API costs by ~60%.

3. Error Handling

Each source runs through its own Try/Catch node. If one RSS feed fails, the others continue. The Gmail summary flags partial runs automatically.

The Result

Cost: $0.03/run ($0.90/month)
Time saved: ~45 minutes daily
Articles processed: 10-15 per morning
Reliability: 47 days of uninterrupted runs

Workflow File

The full n8n workflow JSON is available in my Gumroad starter pack — it's part of the 5-workflow bundle for $9.

What's Next

I'm building a v2 that scores articles by relevance to my specific interests (AI agents, automation tools) and only sends the top 5. Fewer emails, higher signal.

This article was originally published on Kaizen Automation — weekly n8n & AI automation workflows, filtered through Japanese precision.

DEV Community: Shoki | Kaizen Automation