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

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.

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