9 Translation APIs to Make Your Application Multilingual

In our increasingly interconnected world, building a website or application accessible in just one language is extremely limiting. To thrive in today‘s global digital economy, businesses must make their products and services available in multiple tongues to reach a worldwide audience.

But manually creating and maintaining translations of all your content across different languages is an exhausting and time-consuming process. This is where intelligent translation APIs come to the rescue!

A translation API allows you to programmatically translate your application or website content on the fly. It seamlessly connects your app to a robust translation platform or service running in the cloud. This removes the need for you to manually integrate with translation services.

In summary, here are some of the key benefits you can realize by making your application multilingual using a translation API:

Go global: By removing language barriers, you can now access a much wider, global audience for your product or service. This is crucial for businesses targeting worldwide users across different geographies.
Localize content: Translating content into in-country languages allows for better personalization and catering to specific target audiences and locales.
Analyze performance: You can analyze user engagement and app performance across different languages and locales. This allows improving services based on local preferences and tastes.

But not all translation APIs are created equal. Different providers offer varied capabilities and customization options. For instance, some APIs allow language detection on the fly, provide alternative translations, adjust quality levels, and much more.

Let‘s explore some of the most popular API options to make your app multilingual:

Google Cloud Translation API: The Industry Leader

Google Cloud provides a robust Cloud Translation API powered by its cutting-edge Neural Machine Translation (NMT) models. Google continuously updates these algorithms to incorporate the latest techniques and training datasets.

The Translation API can dynamically translate text between around 100 different language pairs. You get unlimited text translations with over 250 billion characters per day translated! It can automatically detect the source language from text across 134 languages.

There are two pricing editions offered by Google Cloud – Basic and Advanced. The Advanced tier provides additional capabilities like custom glossaries, translation style handling, and ability to train custom machine learning models.

With its high accuracy, rich features and generous free tier, Google Cloud Translation API is the undisputed industry leader for app localization.

Microsoft Azure Translator: Feature-packed API

Azure Translator is Microsoft‘s AI-based service for real-time text translation. The Azure Text Translation API enables translations between over 100 human languages. It can not just translate but also transliterate text across scripts. And automatically detect source language from input text or documents.

To access the API capabilities, you first need to create free Microsoft and Azure accounts. Then generate a Translator resource on the Azure portal. This provides you the authentication keys to start using the API.

Microsoft provides SDKs in popular languages like C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Python and more to call the Translator API.

The API also provides a no-translate feature that lets you prevent translating specific parts of text. This is done by adding a notranslate class or translate="no" attribute in the HTML or markup.

Azure Translator has a generous free tier allowing up to 2 million translated characters per month. It also provides advanced paid options for enterprise-scale usage. With its robust features and tight integration into Microsoft‘s developer stack, the Azure Translator API is a compelling choice for NLP applications.

DeepL API: Secure and Compliant Translation

DeepL is an innovative German startup providing neural machine translation services through its API platform. It can be integrated into websites, apps, and internal communications systems of global enterprises.

DeepL utilizes cutting-edge deep learning and NLP techniques to provide highly accurate translations. A key advantage is its secure translation infrastructure designed to be GDPR and privacy compliant.

Text input is immediately translated without being persisted or stored anywhere. This prevents using your data to train DeepL‘s internal AI models without your consent.

There is a free subscription tier allowing up to 500,000 translated characters per month. DeepL also offers a paid Pro plan with usage-based pricing for advanced use cases.

One current limitation is DeepL availability in only select European countries due to data processing restrictions. But overall, DeepL provides a compelling secure and compliant translation API option.

Yandex Translate: Basic Translation API

The Yandex Translate API offered by Russian tech giant Yandex provides a simple API for text and file translations across over 90 languages.

It has a handy demo playground to test out the API. Yandex provides SDKs for various programming languages to call the API.

The Translate API responses are available in XML, JSON and JSONP formats. But one downside is the lack of advanced features beyond basic translation capabilities.

The Yandex Translate API is easy to get started with and provides a free usage tier. It can be a good option for simple translation requirements, but lacks more sophisticated capabilities seen in other API providers.

LibreTranslate: Open-source API

LibreTranslate is a free and open-source neural machine translation API. It is based on advanced transformer models andtrained on large parallel corpora.

LibreTranslate can be used for free for testing or basic personal applications. It is released under the AGPLv3 open source license.

For enterprise production usage, you can self-host LibreTranslate on your own servers and access it using an API key. This avoids cloud translation risks.

The API itself provides simple text and file translation endpoints documented on Swagger UI. But it does not have many advanced features beyond basic translation capabilities. LibreTranslate currently supports around 30 languages with plans to expand coverage.

Overall, LibreTranslate is great for basic usage given its free open source nature. But may lack the sophistication required by enterprise systems.

Translated API: Advanced Translation Services

The Translated API provides programmatic access to the machine translation services offered by Translated.

It can translate content across over 200 language pairs while handling large volumes. The API provides a web dashboard to monitor requests and usage analytics.

Some unique capabilities offered include translation memory leverage, custom glossaries, translation style handling, QA integrations and migration support from other systems.

Pricing is based on a monthly subscription model based on features and usage. For enterprise buyers, Translated provides customized integrations and solutions tailored to your use case.

Systran: Translation API for the Enterprise

Systran is an enterprise-focused translation API enabling multilingual capabilities across 50+ languages. It can translate web pages, apps, platforms, documents and other content.

Use cases include external-facing multilingual websites, internal company communications, customer support applications, product interfaces and documentation.

Systran utilizes neural machine translation technology to deliver fast and accurate translations customized to your domain. It provides a 14-day free trial for up to 500,000 characters.

The Systran translation API is GDPR-compliant and caters to large enterprise and public sector clients with advanced data security needs. Overall, it is a robust and full-featured NLP API for enterprise systems.

Amazon Translate: Serverless API

Amazon Translate is a robust neural machine translation service from AWS supporting over 75 languages.

It uses advanced Natural Language Processing techniques like bidirectional long short-term memory models to deliver high-quality translation. Amazon Translate can automatically detect source text language if unspecified.

A key capability is active customization of translations to your use case by learning from your provided examples and content. This avoids building custom ML models explicitly.

As a serverless API, Amazon Translate simplifies usage and integration. It interoperates seamlessly with other AWS services like Transcribe, Polly, Comprehend, S3, Lambda, DynamoDB etc.

You only pay for what you use with generous pricing tiers. Overall, Amazon Translate provides a full-featured and scalable translation API integrated into AWS.

Translate.com: Combined Human + Machine Translation

Translate.com offers a translation API combining both machine and professional human translation capabilities.

The machine translation API supports over 90 languages using advanced neural models. Meanwhile, the human translation API covers over 60 languages leveraging the company‘s network of expert linguists.

Interestingly, certain features like translation memory, glossaries and storage integration are only available with the Human Translation API.

Translate.com caters to both small businesses and large enterprises with customized integrations. It provides free trials and pay-as-you-go pricing models.

Overall, Translate.com allows hybrid translation workflows blending automation with human expertise. This provides both scale and accuracy for localization.

Evaluating Translation APIs

We have covered the most popular translation APIs, but how do you pick the right one? Let‘s compare the options across some key criteria:

API	Languages	Features	Pricing
Google Cloud	130+	Advanced NMT, glossaries, batch translation, ML models	Free and paid tiers
Microsoft Azure	100+	Transliteration, dictionaries, document translation	Free and paid tiers
Amazon Translate	75+	Multilingual apps, inline customization, serverless	Pay per use
DeepL	60+	Secure and compliant, contextual handling	Free and paid plans
Systran	50+	Translation management portal, custom engines	Free trial, enterprise plans
Yandex	90+	Basic NMT API, easy integration	Free tier, usage based plans
Translate.com	60+	Translation memory, hybrid human + machine API	Custom pricing

Here are some key considerations when evaluating options:

Language support: Consider the languages that need to be translated especially for your target markets. Not all providers support niche and regional languages.
Features: Evaluate if the API provides capabilities like transliteration, multilingual dictionaries, batch processing, glossaries, etc. Advanced providers like Google and Microsoft offer richer features.
Pricing: Balance between free tiers, pay-as-you-go pricing and fixed monthly plans. Enterprise options tend to provide custom pricing.
Accuracy: For key content, human translation is more accurate than fully automated ML. But human translation does not scale with volume.
Security: If dealing with sensitive content, consider compliant solutions like DeepL that do not store your data.
Ease of integration: Look for provided SDKs, documentation, and ease of onboarding onto the platform.

By carefully evaluating your usage needs, content types, target languages and pricing models, you can determine the ideal translation API for your application and use case.

Adding Translation Can Unlock Hidden Opportunities

In our increasingly interconnected world, multilingual experiences are vital to engage users globally. By integrating translation APIs, developers can build applications with dynamic localization capabilities quickly and cost-effectively.

Instead of building complex translation systems from scratch, APIs make it simple to incorporate robust text translation into products and workflows. This unlocks opportunities hidden behind language barriers across industries and verticals.

With innovative translation APIs, we are closer than ever to truly bridging cultures, communities and customers across the globe. The future is multilingual.