 | Microsoft Translator FAQ |
General
- What languages does Microsoft Translator support?
See the various language lists for both the Microsoft Translator Text Translation API and Speech Translation API.
- What is the Microsoft Translator API?
Microsoft Translator, an Azure service, is a cloud-based API offering two sets of APIs – Text Translation API and Speech Translation API.
The Microsoft Translator Text Translation API supports text translation and text-to-speech synthesis.
- Text translation API: Automatically translates text between any of the 60+ supported languages.
- Text-to-speech synthesis API: Outputs audio in any of the supported text-to-speech languages.
Additional functionality includes language detection, customization with the Microsoft Translator Hub, and crowdsourcing improvements using the Collaborative Translation Framework (CTF).
The Microsoft Translator Speech Translation API is the world's first end-to-end speech translation API.
The implementations cover two types of API use and integration:
- Speech-to-speech translation API: Two-way speech-to-speech translation is possible for all the supported Microsoft Translator conversation languages.
- Speech-to-text translation API: For scenarios such as presentations or BI, developers can translate any of the supported conversation translation languages into any of the supported 60+ text languages.
It is the same API that is powering the speech translation capabilities in the Microsoft Translator live feature, Skype Translator and the conversation feature of the Microsoft Translator iOS and Android apps.
- Can I use the Microsoft Translator API for free or test it before I buy a monthly subscription?
Absolutely. Microsoft Translator offers a subscription plan in the Azure portal at no charge. The Microsoft Translator API Text Translation and Speech Translation offers are available in the Cognitive Services section of the Azure portal. The subscription is self-managed and you change the monthly subscription plan as needed.
New Azure portal users can sign up for a free 30-day Azure Account, which includes a $200 USD credit to spend towards any Azure service, which includes the Microsoft Translator API.
- How do I calculate the monthly volume?
For the Microsoft Translator Text Translation API, a monthly subscription volume is based on character count, rather than on the number of queries, words, bytes, or sentences. The basis for calculation is the number of characters in UTF-16 representation. Every character of the input counts. Also, each translation of the same text to a new language counts as a separate translation.
A character is defined as:
- Untranslated text you pass into the Translate, TranslateArray, TranslateArray2, GetTranslations, GetTranslationsArray, Paraphrase, TransformText, or Speak method counts
- A repeated translation counts by itself, even if you have translated the same text previously
- All markup counts, HTML, XML tags, etc.
- An individual letter
- A space, tab, markup, and white space
- Every code point defined in Unicode
To estimate your monthly volume, take the total characters to translate, multiply it by the number of languages you want to have it translated into, then take the number and spread it over the maximum number of hours or days you are able to wait for completion.
As an order of magnitude, this FAQ contains about 6,000 characters; a 30-page document has around 17,000 characters; the seven Harry Potter books comprise about 60 million characters.
For the Microsoft Translator Speech Translation API, all of the audio data (in seconds of audio), including silence, submitted to the Microsoft Translator service counts towards the subscribed monthly transaction balance.
- Where do I buy a subscription to the Microsoft Translator API?
The Microsoft Translator API is available on the Azure portal. Payment is by credit or debit cards only, unless previously approved for invoice.
For enterprise customers who qualify for an Enterprise Agreement (EA) in the Microsoft Volume Licensing Program, please inquire through your company's procurement department. The Microsoft Translator API can be added to the EA at any time. There are two separate Microsoft Translator API offers.
Text Translation API monthly subscription plans:
- Free monthly subscription – 2 million characters
- Pay-as-you-go – pay per 1 million character
- Monthly commitment of 250 million characters + overage
- Monthly commitment of 1 billion characters + overage
- Monthly commitment of 10 billion characters + overage
Speech Translation API monthly subscription plans:
- Free monthly subscription – 10 hours (Beginning May 1, 2017)
- Pay-as-you-go – pay per hour
- Monthly commitment of 100 hours + overage
- Monthly commitment of 1,000 hours + overage
- Monthly commitment of 10,000 hours + overage
Pricing is based on a monthly period and you will automatically be billed every month until you cancel the subscription.
- Can I customize my translations?
Yes, Microsoft Translator gives users the ability to customize translations for free:
- Microsoft Translator Hub: build a custom dictionary and/or a language model based on your pre-existing translated text that reflects your domain, terminology or style. This capability is only supported for Statistical Machine Translations models, not Neural ones.
- Collaborative Translation Framework (CTF): Allow for community-sourced improvements of automatically generated translations post-publishing. CTF is built-in to the Microsoft Translator API.
- Where can I see the monthly usage?
View usage in your user account on Azure.
- Where can I learn more about the breadth of Microsoft Translator products?
- Is attribution required when using the Microsoft Translator API?
Yes, the Microsoft Translator attribution is required when using the Microsoft Translator API – Text Translation and Speech Translation. Follow the requirements outlined in the Microsoft Translator attribution guidelines.
- What does Microsoft Translator do with my data?
Microsoft takes your privacy seriously. Please read the full Microsoft Translator privacy statement.
When connecting to the service, customers can use the unencrypted, http:// protocol or the https://, SSL-encrypted protocol. The latter uses a 2,048-bit RSA key and the implementation is not linked, and therefore not susceptible to the security risks of Open SSL.
- Can I replace human translators with Microsoft Translator?
No. Machine translation is generally used where the quality-level requirement is not as stringent as where human translation is required. Use machine translation where the quantity of content, speed of content creation (such as user-generated content in blogs, forums, etc.), and budget (or lack thereof) make it impossible to use human translation. It caters to a segment of the market for translation needs that, thus far, could not be made economically feasible or could not be made available with a very short turnaround time.
Machine translation has been used as a first pass by several of our language service provider (LSP) partners, before using human translation; it can improve productivity by up to 50 percent. For a list of LSPs, please visit the Find a Microsoft Translator partner page.
- How do you measure the quality of Microsoft Translator?
Microsoft Translator evaluates the quality with the BLEU (bilingual evaluation understudy) standards and our own benchmarks (both automatic and human evaluations). We are constantly improving our machine-learning engines and language models.
Depending on multiple variables, such as length and type of text translated, language pairs (source and target), industry lingo, or the domain in which Translator is used, results will vary greatly for any vendor offering a machine translation solution.
- What does the “in school” option mean, in the Microsoft Translator live feature?
When you select the “in school” option the session will default to a locked “Presentation” mode, where only the creator of the conversation can speak, and everyone else is in “listen” mode. This setting is available to protect children’s privacy as per COPPA regulations as the spoken conversation is recorded for product improvement purposes.
Product Development
- Where is the documentation for the Microsoft Translator APIs?
Go to www.aka.ms/TranslatorDevDocumentation. Example apps are available on GitHub.
- What protocols can developers use to access the Microsoft Translator API?
For the Microsoft Translator Text Translation API, access is via REST. For the Microsoft Translator Speech Translation API, access is via REST, WebSocket.
- Which data centers is Microsoft Translator running?
Microsoft Translator is hosted on separate hardware in the Microsoft data center infrastructure around the world and has been since its inception more than 10 years ago. Therefore, Microsoft Translator benefits from a similar availability, security, and scalability that other Microsoft cloud services do, such as Office 365, Azure, and Bing.
Subscriptions
- Do I need to renew my current subscription plan every month?
No, you will automatically be renewed at the current pricing every month until you change or cancel the subscription. You are billed at the end of a subscription month.
- What happens if I reach the limit of the free subscription plans?
If you subscribe to the free subscription plan, the Microsoft Translator service will stop if you reach 2 million characters during a subscription month for the Text Translation API, and 10 hours if you are subscribed to the Speech Translation API. The Microsoft Translator service will start again at the beginning of your next subscription month or when you change your subscription to a paid plan.
- If I subscribe to the free or minimum commitment plans, what happens to the remaining balance at the end of the subscription month?
The characters left over in a subscription month are lost, there are no remaining balance rollovers, credits or refunds.
- Can I change subscription plans any time?
Yes, and you will lose any remaining balance in the plan when you change plans. Also, at the end of each subscription month, you will lose any remaining balance you have in the current subscription.
Support
Show all- Where can I get technical support for the Microsoft Translator API?
We have a few resources available at no charge:
- Click here for the Microsoft Translator API documentation.
- Example apps are available on GitHub.
- You may find answers online either through our website or through the Microsoft Translator user and developer forum.
Please check the above resources first; if you don’t find an answer, post your question on the forum. For questions related to an error, please include the time the error occurred (including the time zone), the date, a copy of the error message, and a snippet of the code.
- Where do I get billing support?
Visit the Azure billing and subscription FAQ webpage first and if you need immediate assistance, log into your user account in the Azure portal and click on the ‘Help + Support’ icon at the top right corner of the webpage to submit a support request.