Hey all, just wanted to ask if the Smart Search v2 in the Ankihub tier is equally good in other languages? For my case, it is Italian. I guess more specifically I want to ask, is there any degradation in search result accuracy if you use another language (esp. one close to English)?
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Smart Search v2 is built on large language model (LLM) technology, which is generally multilingual and can understand and search in many languages, including Italian.
However:
- The quality of results tends to be best in English, especially for decks whose content is primarily in English (like most AnKing/AnkiHub community decks).
- For Italian-language decks or fields written in Italian, Smart Search v2 should still work, but:
- Semantic matches may be a bit less precise than in English.
- Mixed-language cards (e.g., English question, Italian answer) can sometimes confuse search.
Because I donāt see any official AnkiHub documentation or announcement specifically claiming āfull multilingual supportā or benchmarks for Italian, I canāt guarantee that performance is equally good as English. Itās more accurate to say: it supports Italian, but English likely performs better.
Practical tip:
When you try Smart Search v2 in Italian, you can improve results by:
- Using clear, full-sentence queries in Italian.
- Including key medical/technical terms in either Italian or English if your deck content is mixed-language.
If youāre willing, you could also share a couple of example queries and what you expected vs. what you got; that kind of feedback is very helpful for the AnkiHub team to refine Smart Search for nonāEnglish languages.
Yes, Smart Search is multilingual. We use frontier LLM models in Smart Search, and current frontier models handle multiple languages very well. We canāt guarantee the exact same performance across all languages because our development and testing revolve around English, but it should be just as good in other languages. I also speak Portuguese and use it for Portuguese lectures sometimes, and it works pretty well.
Let us know if you need help with anything else! 
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Thank you so much! Sorry for bothering, but would you have any suspicion or data that using another language would significantly depricate the accuracy of the search results? In that case, maybe it would be better to translate and then use Smart Search. Thanks so much once again
Actually, based on the data we have, current AI models handle multiple languages pretty well, and Italian is common enough that they should deal with it easily. I think youāre good to just use it in your native language. I wouldnāt bother translating anything into English. Every time I use it in Portuguese, itās no different from English.
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