How private is it, exactly

"Private" is a claim every translation product makes. Here is what it means in Traxlate, concretely enough that you could check it with your network monitor open.

What runs on your device

The translation engine and the language pack run inside your browser tab, your desktop app or your phone app. Your source text, the translation, your glossary, your history and any document or picture you translate are processed there and stored there. We have no server that receives them, so there is nothing for us to read, log, train on or hand over.

What does touch our servers

• Downloads. The language pack, the checker, the engine, and the recognizer's language data for pictures are fetched from our download hosts. The speech model for subtitles and on-device dictation, and the voices for dubbing, are fetched once from a public model host rather than from us; the page names the host and the size before it starts. A download tells the host that a file was requested, not what you translate with it.
• The website itself. Loading traxlate.com is an ordinary page load. Tool pages and the translation run inside them need no request after that except the downloads above.
• Account and billing, if you use them. Signing in and subscribing go to our servers. Sync, when you turn it on, sends encrypted data with a key that stays on your devices: from the browser, your glossary, your translation memory (the sentences you corrected) and your history; from the desktop and phone apps, your glossary and history. We store the ciphertext and cannot read it.
• A local bridge check. The web tools probe a local address on your own machine once per run to find a desktop engine if one is installed; the request never leaves your computer.

The two cases where text leaves, and why they are yours

1. Human translation. When you order a human translator, the document is uploaded to the linguist. The button says so, the order page says so, and nothing happens until you confirm.
2. The developer API. The hosted API is a separate product for programs, not an app feature. Text sent to it by your code is processed on our server, under its own terms; the apps never use it. The browser extension can be pointed at it too, and asks before it does.

Things people assume that are not true

• The apps do not fall back to a server when your device is slow. A slow device translates slowly, and the status line says so.
• Nothing is sampled, "anonymised" or sent "to improve quality". The engine does not phone home.
• Closing the tab does not upload a session. There is no session on our side.

Can you see what I translate?

No. It never reaches us. The engine runs on your device and there is no server copy of your text.

Do you keep my documents?

No. A document is opened, translated and rebuilt on your device. The one exception is a document you send to a human translator, by your explicit order.

What about sync?

Sync sends your glossary, your corrections and your history to our server, encrypted on your device, so another signed-in device can fetch them. It is off until you turn it on, and we cannot read what it stores.