Automatically translate your Loco project via a third party provider
Loco's bot system provides API integration points for the following machine translation providers:
See the linked pages for information on each provider; what follows is general information for all third party services.
Read first: How to add and run a translation bot.
Key security
Integrating these providers into Loco requires that we store the credentials you use to access the relevant third party APIs. In order for tasks to run in the background, we cannot encrypt the credentials in any way that would prevent our system from reading them.
We don't expose secret credentials in the browser, except when logged in as the person who entered them - the bot owner. You may also notice that in some situations API calls are made directly from your browser. This only happens when you're logged in to Loco as the bot owner. Shared bots are always operated via our back end servers such that secret credentials are never exposed.
Recommended precautions
Restrict key usage
If possible, you should generate API keys specifically for use with Loco, and (if supported by the vendor) restrict key usage to our IP range as well as your own.Minimize privileges
Some vendors may provide multiple services via the same access credentials. Ensure the credentials we store don't have access beyond the functions you need, and use less privileged service accounts if possible.Delete unused keys
Once a bot is deleted we have no record of its configuration. Access credentials are not logged anywhere, so you might want to consider removing keys you don't use regularly.
Language support
All supported services will be limited to some extent in the languages they support. Loco attempts to find the most appropriate match for your project locales, but will always attempt translation regardless. We allow APIs to return an error if a language pair is not supported.
You may find that your language works, but your particular region or dialect is wrong. For example: translating into Brazilian Portuguese may produce European Portuguese. This is likely to be because the service supports only the language code "pt" and not "pt-BR".
Formality and tone
Although some third party APIs support formality variance, Loco doesn't currently have any such concept. This is on the roadmap to implement.
Legal disclaimers
Third party services are subject to their individual terms of use and may incur fees. Please refer to your service provider's documentation for pricing and terms.
Your usage of translation providers is a legal arrangement between you (the end user of Loco) and the service provider in question. Loco is not party to this agreement, except to the extent that we are sending traffic to their servers and will abide by their terms of use.
We are not reselling access to third party APIs. We provide API integration points, and our software (in some capacities) requires a paid subscription. Billing for these services will come directly from your provider, and will be based on the volume of translation you have configured our software to perform.
We are not responsible for what you do with the translations you store in Loco, whether obtained from machines or humans. Check the attribution requirements of any third party content you use.
Attribution
Content saved automatically into Loco is attributed to the translation service provider by way of a credit in the Loco project management view. Any edit will remove the attribution, but it will remain in the asset's revision history.
When downloading your translations and using them in your own software, you may be required to publicly show a similar attribution. We can't advise more specifically on this topic, but be sure to check the terms of your chosen provider and abide by them.