Paid Google Translate API Is Now Avaialble

By popular request, Google is debuting a paid version of its Translate API. The company announced earlier that it would be deprecating and shutting down the API, due to frequent abuse Google said, leading to a lot of developer outcry.

Those depending on the Translate API wanted a choice, even if it meant paying for the service, which has been free so far.

Google relented and has now announced the debut of the paid version and the pricing for it.

"Today, we’re introducing a paid version of the Google Translate API for businesses and commercial software developers. The Google Translate API provides a programmatic interface to access Google’s latest machine translation technology," Jeff Chin, product manager at Google, announced.

"This API supports translations between 50+ languages (more than 2500 language pairs) and is made possible by Google’s cloud infrastructure and large scale machine learning algorithms," he added.

With the Translate API, developers can request a translation for a piece of text in any of the languages supported by Google. The service has been free, but there were developers building commercial applications on top of it, i.e. selling translations they got for free from Google.

Apparently, this practice was widespread enough for Google to shut down its API entirely. Only after plenty of developers complained that they were left in the cold and suggested a paid alternative, Google changed its plans.

Translations will cost $20 for one million characters. Google says that this means, on average, $0.05 per page, at 500 words per page. There is a usage cap though, developers can only translate 50 million characters per month, which may not be enough for popular applications or websites. Existing users get 100,000 characters per month for free, until December 1, 2011.

Google also points out that there are plenty of alternatives for translation. Academic users can sign up for the Google Translate Research API, but that's the only other API available.

Alternatively, Google suggests the Google Website Translator gadget or even Google Translate and the Translator Toolkit. All other translation resources will remain free, Google says.