Quickstart: Synchronous document translation

Synchronous translation lets you translate a single document and receive the output directly in the API response — no Azure Blob Storage required. Use this approach for interactive scenarios, lightweight integrations, or single-file requests.

Prerequisites

You need one of the following resources to get started:

• An Azure AI Translator resource, or a Microsoft Foundry resource.

For more information, see Prerequisites and setup.

Step 1: Prepare your document

The synchronous API accepts one document per request as a multipart form upload. Confirm your document is in one of the supported document formats and note its MIME type — you specify it in the request so the service can parse the file correctly.

Step 2: Submit a synchronous translation request

Send a POST request to the /document:translate endpoint with your document attached as a multipart form field. Specify the target language using the targetLanguage query parameter. The -o option writes the translated document to a local file. Replace {endpoint} and {key} with the values from your Translator resource.

curl -i -X POST "{endpoint}/translator/document:translate?targetLanguage=fr&api-version=2026-03-01" \
  -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: {key}" \
  -F "document=@sample.docx;type=application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document" \
  -o translated.docx

Step 3: Review the response

A successful request returns a 200 OK response. The translated document is returned directly in the response body and written to the output file you specified with -o.

Optional: include a glossary

To apply custom terminology, add a glossary file as a second form field in the same request:

-F "glossary=@glossary.tsv;type=text/tab-separated-values"

For more information, see Create and use a glossary.