A computer-implemented technique can include receiving a machine translation input specifying (i) a source text, (ii) a source language of the source text, and (iii) a target language for the source text, and obtaining a machine translation of the source text from the source language to the target language to obtain a translated source text. The technique can include determining whether to swap the source and target languages based on (i) the source text and (ii) at least one language model, and in response to determining to swap the source and target languages: swapping the source and target languages to obtain modified source and target languages, utilizing the translated source text as a modified source text, obtaining a machine translation of the modified source text from the modified source language to the modified target language to obtain a translated modified source text, and outputting the translated modified source text.