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Translator 3.0: Translate

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Translates text.

Request URL

Send a POST request to:

https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/translate?api-version=3.0

See Virtual Network Support for Translator service selected network and private endpoint configuration and support.

Request parameters

Request parameters passed on the query string are:

Required parameters

Query parameter Description
api-version Required parameter.
Version of the API requested by the client. Value must be 3.0.
to Required parameter.
Specifies the language of the output text. The target language must be one of the supported languages included in the translation scope. For example, use to=de to translate to German.
It's possible to translate to multiple languages simultaneously by repeating the parameter in the query string. For example, use to=de&to=it to translate to German and Italian.

Optional parameters

Query parameter Description
from Optional parameter.
Specifies the language of the input text. Find which languages are available to translate from by looking up supported languages using the translation scope. If the from parameter isn't specified, automatic language detection is applied to determine the source language.

You must use the from parameter rather than autodetection when using the dynamic dictionary feature. Note: the dynamic dictionary feature is case-sensitive.
textType Optional parameter.
Defines whether the text being translated is plain text or HTML text. Any HTML needs to be a well-formed, complete element. Possible values are: plain (default) or html.
category Optional parameter.
A string specifying the category (domain) of the translation. This parameter is used to get translations from a customized system built with Custom Translator. To use your deployed customized system, add the Category ID from your Custom Translator project details to the category parameter. Default value is: general.
profanityAction Optional parameter.
Specifies how profanities should be treated in translations. Possible values are: NoAction (default), Marked, or Deleted. To understand ways to treat profanity, see Profanity handling.
profanityMarker Optional parameter.
Specifies how profanities should be marked in translations. Possible values are: Asterisk (default) or Tag. To understand ways to treat profanity, see Profanity handling.
includeAlignment Optional parameter.
Specifies whether to include alignment projection from source text to translated text. Possible values are: true or false (default).
includeSentenceLength Optional parameter.
Specifies whether to include sentence boundaries for the input text and the translated text. Possible values are: true or false (default).
suggestedFrom Optional parameter.
Specifies a fallback language if the language of the input text can't be identified. Language autodetection is applied when the from parameter is omitted. If detection fails, the suggestedFrom language is assumed.
fromScript Optional parameter.
Specifies the script of the input text.
toScript Optional parameter.
Specifies the script of the translated text.
allowFallback Optional parameter.
Specifies that the service is allowed to fall back to a general system when a custom system doesn't exist. Possible values are: true (default) or false.

allowFallback=false specifies that the translation should only use systems trained for the category specified by the request. If a translation from language X to language Y requires chaining through a pivot language E, then all the systems in the chain (X → E and E → Y) need to be custom and have the same category. If no system is found with the specific category, the request returns a 400 status code. allowFallback=true specifies that the service is allowed to fall back to a general system when a custom system doesn't exist.

Request headers include:

Headers Description
Authentication headers Required request header.
See available options for authentication.
Content-Type Required request header.
Specifies the content type of the payload.
Accepted value is application/json; charset=UTF-8.
Content-Length Optional.
The length of the request body.
X-ClientTraceId Optional.
A client-generated GUID to uniquely identify the request. You can omit this header if you include the trace ID in the query string using a query parameter named ClientTraceId.

Request body

The body of the request is a JSON array. Each array element is a JSON object with a string property named Text, which represents the string to translate.

[
    {"Text":"I would really like to drive your car around the block a few times."}
]

For information on character and array limits, see Request limits.

Response body

A successful response is a JSON array with one result for each string in the input array. A result object includes the following properties:

  • detectedLanguage: An object describing the detected language through the following properties:

    • language: A string representing the code of the detected language.

    • score: A float value indicating the confidence in the result. The score is between zero and one and a low score indicates a low confidence.

    The detectedLanguage property is only present in the result object when language autodetection is requested.

  • translations: An array of translation results. The size of the array matches the number of target languages specified through the to query parameter. Each element in the array includes:

    • to: A string representing the language code of the target language.

    • text: A string giving the translated text.

    • transliteration: An object giving the translated text in the script specified by the toScript parameter.

      • script: A string specifying the target script.

      • text: A string giving the translated text in the target script.

      The transliteration object isn't included if transliteration doesn't take place.

      • alignment: An object with a single string property named proj, which maps input text to translated text. The alignment information is only provided when the request parameter includeAlignment is true. Alignment is returned as a string value of the following format: [[SourceTextStartIndex]:[SourceTextEndIndex]–[TgtTextStartIndex]:[TgtTextEndIndex]]. The colon separates start and end index, the dash separates the languages, and space separates the words. One word can align with zero, one, or multiple words in the other language, and the aligned words can be noncontiguous. When no alignment information is available, the alignment element is empty. See Obtain alignment information for an example and restrictions.

    • sentLen: An object returning sentence boundaries in the input and output texts.

      • srcSentLen: An integer array representing the lengths of the sentences in the input text. The length of the array is the number of sentences, and the values are the length of each sentence.

      • transSentLen: An integer array representing the lengths of the sentences in the translated text. The length of the array is the number of sentences, and the values are the length of each sentence.

      Sentence boundaries are only included when the request parameter includeSentenceLength is true.

  • sourceText: An object with a single string property named text, which gives the input text in the default script of the source language. sourceText property is present only when the input is expressed in a script that's not the usual script for the language. For example, if the input were Arabic written in Latin script, then sourceText.text would be the same Arabic text converted into Arab script.

Examples of JSON responses are provided in the examples section.

Response headers

Headers Description
X-requestid Value generated by the service to identify the request used for troubleshooting purposes.
X-mt-system Specifies the system type that was used for translation for each 'to' language requested for translation. The value is a comma-separated list of strings. Each string indicates a type:

Custom - Request includes a custom system and at least one custom system was used during translation.
Team - All other requests
X-metered-usage Specifies consumption (the number of characters for which the user is charged) for the translation job request. For example, if the word "Hello" is translated from English (en) to French (fr), this field returns the value 5.

Response status codes

The following are the possible HTTP status codes that a request returns.

Status code Description
200 Success.
400 One of the query parameters is missing or not valid. Correct request parameters before retrying.
401 The request couldn't be authenticated. Check that credentials are specified and valid.
403 The request isn't authorized. Check the details error message. This status code often indicates that you used all the free translations provided with a trial subscription.
408 The request couldn't be fulfilled because a resource is missing. Check the details error message. When the request includes a custom category, this status code often indicates that the custom translation system isn't yet available to serve requests. The request should be retried after a waiting period (for example, 1 minute).
429 The server rejected the request because the client exceeded request limits.
500 An unexpected error occurred. If the error persists, report it with: date and time of the failure, request identifier from response header X-RequestId, and client identifier from request header X-ClientTraceId.
503 Server temporarily unavailable. Retry the request. If the error persists, report it with: date and time of the failure, request identifier from response header X-RequestId, and client identifier from request header X-ClientTraceId.

If an error occurs, the request returns a JSON error response. The error code is a 6-digit number combining the 3-digit HTTP status code followed by a 3-digit number to further categorize the error. Common error codes can be found on the v3 Translator reference page.

Examples

Translate a single input

This example shows how to translate a single sentence from English to Simplified Chinese.

curl -X POST "https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/translate?api-version=3.0&from=en&to=zh-Hans" -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: <client-secret>" -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8" -d "[{'Text':'Hello, what is your name?'}]"

The response body is:

[
    {
        "translations":[
            {"text":"你好, 你叫什么名字？","to":"zh-Hans"}
        ]
    }
]

The translations array includes one element, which provides the translation of the single piece of text in the input.

Translate a single input with language autodetection

This example shows how to translate a single sentence from English to Simplified Chinese. The request doesn't specify the input language. Autodetection of the source language is used instead.

curl -X POST "https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/translate?api-version=3.0&to=zh-Hans" -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: <client-secret>" -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8" -d "[{'Text':'Hello, what is your name?'}]"

The response body is:

[
    {
        "detectedLanguage": {"language": "en", "score": 1.0},
        "translations":[
            {"text": "你好, 你叫什么名字？", "to": "zh-Hans"}
        ]
    }
]

The response is similar to the response from the previous example. Since language autodetection was requested, the response also includes information about the language detected for the input text. The language autodetection works better with longer input text.

Translate with transliteration

Let's extend the previous example by adding transliteration. The following request asks for a Chinese translation written in Latin script.

curl -X POST "https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/translate?api-version=3.0&to=zh-Hans&toScript=Latn" -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: <client-secret>" -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8" -d "[{'Text':'Hello, what is your name?'}]"

The response body is:

[
    {
        "detectedLanguage":{"language":"en","score":1.0},
        "translations":[
            {
                "text":"你好, 你叫什么名字？",
                "transliteration":{"script":"Latn", "text":"nǐ hǎo , nǐ jiào shén me míng zì ？"},
                "to":"zh-Hans"
            }
        ]
    }
]

The translation result now includes a transliteration property, which gives the translated text using Latin characters.

Translate multiple pieces of text

Translating multiple strings at once is simply a matter of specifying an array of strings in the request body.

curl -X POST "https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/translate?api-version=3.0&from=en&to=zh-Hans" -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: <client-secret>" -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8" -d "[{'Text':'Hello, what is your name?'}, {'Text':'I am fine, thank you.'}]"

The response contains the translation of all pieces of text in the exact same order as in the request. The response body is:

[
    {
        "translations":[
            {"text":"你好, 你叫什么名字？","to":"zh-Hans"}
        ]
    },
    {
        "translations":[
            {"text":"我很好，谢谢你。","to":"zh-Hans"}
        ]
    }
]

Translate to multiple languages

This example shows how to translate the same input to several languages in one request.

curl -X POST "https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/translate?api-version=3.0&from=en&to=zh-Hans&to=de" -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: <client-secret>" -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8" -d "[{'Text':'Hello, what is your name?'}]"

The response body is:

[
    {
        "translations":[
            {"text":"你好, 你叫什么名字？","to":"zh-Hans"},
            {"text":"Hallo, was ist dein Name?","to":"de"}
        ]
    }
]

Handle profanity

Normally, the Translator service retains profanity that is present in the source in the translation. The degree of profanity and the context that makes words profane differ between cultures, and as a result the degree of profanity in the target language can be amplified or reduced.

If you want to avoid getting profanity in the translation, regardless of the presence of profanity in the source text, you can use the profanity filtering option. The option allows you to choose whether you want to see profanity deleted, marked with appropriate tags (giving you the option to add your own post-processing), or with no action taken. The accepted values of ProfanityAction are Deleted, Marked, and NoAction (default).

Accepted ProfanityAction value ProfanityMarker value Action Example: Source - Spanish Example: Target - English
NoAction Default. Same as not setting the option. Profanity passes from source to target. Que coche de <insert-profane-word> What a <insert-profane-word> car
Marked Asterisk Asterisks replace profane words (default). Que coche de <insert-profane-word> What a *** car
Marked Tag Profane words are surrounded by XML tags <profanity>...</profanity>. Que coche de <insert-profane-word> What a <profanity> <insert-profane-word> </profanity> car
Deleted Profane words are removed from the output without replacement. Que coche de <insert-profane-word> What a car

In the above examples, <insert-profane-word> is a placeholder for profane words.

For example:

curl -X POST "https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/translate?api-version=3.0&from=en&to=de&profanityAction=Marked" -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: <client-secret>" -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8" -d "[{'Text':'This is an <expletive> good idea.'}]"

This request returns:

[
    {
        "translations":[
            {"text":"Das ist eine *** gute Idee.","to":"de"}
        ]
    }
]

Compare with:

curl -X POST "https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/translate?api-version=3.0&from=en&to=de&profanityAction=Marked&profanityMarker=Tag" -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: <client-secret>" -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8" -d "[{'Text':'This is an <expletive> good idea.'}]"

That last request returns:

[
    {
        "translations":[
            {"text":"Das ist eine <profanity>verdammt</profanity> gute Idee.","to":"de"}
        ]
    }
]

Translate content that includes markup

It's common to translate content that includes markup such as content from an HTML page or content from an XML document. Include query parameter textType=html when translating content with tags. In addition, it's sometimes useful to exclude specific content from translation. You can use the attribute class=notranslate to specify content that should remain in its original language. In the following example, the content inside the first div element isn't translated, while the content in the second div element is translated.

<div class="notranslate">This will not be translated.</div>
<div>This will be translated. </div>

Here's a sample request to illustrate.

curl -X POST "https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/translate?api-version=3.0&from=en&to=zh-Hans&textType=html" -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: <client-secret>" -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8" -d "[{'Text':'<div class=\"notranslate\">This will not be translated.</div><div>This will be translated.</div>'}]"

The response is:

[
    {
        "translations":[
            {"text":"<div class=\"notranslate\">This will not be translated.</div><div>这将被翻译。</div>","to":"zh-Hans"}
        ]
    }
]

Obtain alignment information

Alignment is returned as a string value of the following format for every word of the source. The information for each word is separated by a space, including for non-space-separated languages (scripts) like Chinese:

[[SourceTextStartIndex]:[SourceTextEndIndex]–[TgtTextStartIndex]:[TgtTextEndIndex]] *

Example alignment string: "0:0-7:10 1:2-11:20 3:4-0:3 3:4-4:6 5:5-21:21".

In other words, the colon separates start and end index, the dash separates the languages, and space separates the words. One word can align with zero, one, or multiple words in the other language, and the aligned words can be noncontiguous. When no alignment information is available, the Alignment element is empty. The method returns no error in that case.

To receive alignment information, specify includeAlignment=true on the query string.

curl -X POST "https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/translate?api-version=3.0&from=en&to=fr&includeAlignment=true" -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: <client-secret>" -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8" -d "[{'Text':'The answer lies in machine translation.'}]"

The response is:

[
    {
        "translations":[
            {
                "text":"La réponse se trouve dans la traduction automatique.",
                "to":"fr",
                "alignment":{"proj":"0:2-0:1 4:9-3:9 11:14-11:19 16:17-21:24 19:25-40:50 27:37-29:38 38:38-51:51"}
            }
        ]
    }
]

The alignment information starts with 0:2-0:1, which means that the first three characters in the source text (The) map to the first two characters in the translated text (La).

Limitations

Obtaining alignment information is an experimental feature that we enabled for prototyping research and experiences with potential phrase mappings. Here are some of the notable restrictions where alignments aren't supported:

  • Alignment isn't available for text in HTML format that is, textType=html
  • Alignment is only returned for a subset of the language pairs:
    • English to/from any other language except Chinese Traditional, Cantonese (Traditional) or Serbian (Cyrillic)
    • from Japanese to Korean or from Korean to Japanese
    • from Japanese to Chinese Simplified and Chinese Simplified to Japanese
    • from Chinese Simplified to Chinese Traditional and Chinese Traditional to Chinese Simplified
  • You don't alignment if the sentence is a canned translation. Example of a canned translation is This is a test, I love you, and other high frequency sentences
  • Alignment isn't available when you apply any of the approaches to prevent translation as described here

Obtain sentence boundaries

To receive information about sentence length in the source text and translated text, specify includeSentenceLength=true on the query string.

curl -X POST "https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/translate?api-version=3.0&from=en&to=fr&includeSentenceLength=true" -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: <client-secret>" -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8" -d "[{'Text':'The answer lies in machine translation. The best machine translation technology cannot always provide translations tailored to a site or users like a human. Simply copy and paste a code snippet anywhere.'}]"

The response is:

[
    {
        "translations":[
            {
                "text":"La réponse se trouve dans la traduction automatique. La meilleure technologie de traduction automatique ne peut pas toujours fournir des traductions adaptées à un site ou des utilisateurs comme un être humain. Il suffit de copier et coller un extrait de code n'importe où.",
                "to":"fr",
                "sentLen":{"srcSentLen":[40,117,46],"transSentLen":[53,157,62]}
            }
        ]
    }
]

Translate with dynamic dictionary

If you already know the translation you want to apply to a word or a phrase, you can supply it as markup within the request. The dynamic dictionary is only safe for proper nouns such as personal names and product names. Note: the dynamic dictionary feature is case-sensitive.

The markup to supply uses the following syntax.

<mstrans:dictionary translation="translation of phrase">phrase</mstrans:dictionary>

For example, consider the English sentence "The word wordomatic is a dictionary entry." To preserve the word wordomatic in the translation, send the request:

curl -X POST "https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/translate?api-version=3.0&from=en&to=de" -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: <client-secret>" -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8" -d "[{'Text':'The word <mstrans:dictionary translation=\"wordomatic\">wordomatic</mstrans:dictionary> is a dictionary entry.'}]"

The result is:

[
    {
        "translations":[
            {"text":"Das Wort \"wordomatic\" ist ein Wörterbucheintrag.","to":"de"}
        ]
    }
]

This dynamic-dictionary feature works the same way with textType=text or with textType=html. The feature should be used sparingly. The appropriate and far better way of customizing translation is by using Custom Translator. Custom Translator makes full use of context and statistical probabilities. If you can create training data that shows your work or phrase in context, you get better results. Learn more about Custom Translator.

Next steps

Try the Translator quickstart