🗣️ Polyglot - Scalable Translation Service

A fast, reliable, and modular translation API designed to meet the scale required by FxEmbed.

With our native multi-provider architecture, we support multiple kinds of providers:

• Free translations from popular services like Google Translate, DeepL, and Bing Translate
• Official APIs using your own API keys for services like Azure AI Translator, DeepL API, and AWS Translate. Each of which have free tiers or trials.
• Self-hosted alternative LibreTranslate

Features

• Dynamic Selection: Chooses between providers based on target language, input string length, and availability
• Load Balancing and Rate Limit Leveling: Distributes requests across translation providers
• Automatic Failover: If one provider fails, automatically tries others (free first, then paid)
• Designed to Scale: Use higher rate limits for free services by scaling across servers and network providers

Quick Start

Using Docker Compose

Edit the docker-compose.yml file to set bound port and your API keys if you want to use paid translation providers.

docker compose up -d

Using Docker

# Pull and run the latest image
docker run -p 3220:3220 ghcr.io/fxembed/polyglot:latest

# Or run with environment variables 
docker run -p 3220:3220 \
  -e AZURE_TRANSLATOR_KEY="your_azure_key" \
  -e AZURE_TRANSLATOR_REGION="eastus" \
  -e DEEPL_API_KEY="your_deepl_key" \
  ghcr.io/fxembed/polyglot:latest

Standalone

This requires the Bun runtime installed.

# Clone the repository
git clone <your-repo-url>
cd polyglot

# Install dependencies
bun install

# Start the server
bun run index.ts

The API will be available at http://localhost:3220 (port configurable in .env or docker-compose.yml)

Optional: Configure Paid APIs

Relying on free services alone is not ideal since requests can be throttled or blocked (DeepL in particular is very aggressive at this). So we support a variety of paid translation providers, which luckily have free tiers:

• Azure AI Translator - 2M characters free per month, forever
• DeepL - 500K characters free per month, forever
• AWS Translate - 2M characters free per month, 12 months only

# Azure AI Translator 
AZURE_TRANSLATOR_KEY="your_azure_key"
AZURE_TRANSLATOR_REGION="eastus"

# DeepL Official API  
DEEPL_API_KEY="your_deepl_key"

# AWS Translate
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="your_access_key_id"
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="your_access_key"
AWS_REGION="your_region" # optional, defaults to us-east-1

# LibreTranslate (self-hosted or public instance)
LIBRETRANSLATE_URL="https://translate.example.com"
LIBRETRANSLATE_API_KEY="your_api_key_if_required" # optional for some instances

Note: Free providers (Google Translate, Bing, DeepLX) work without configuration.

📖 API Usage

Translate Text

Endpoint: POST /translate

If you configured an ACCESS_TOKEN, please provide it in the Authorization header as Bearer <token>.

Request Body:

{
  "text": "Hello, world!",
  "target_lang": "es",
  "source_lang": "en"  // Optional - auto-detected if not provided
}

Response:

{
  "translated_text": "¡Hola Mundo!",
  "source_lang": "en",
  "target_lang": "es",
  "provider": "google"
}

Example with cURL

# Basic translation, auto detect language
curl -X POST http://localhost:3220/translate \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"text": "Hello, world!", "target_lang": "es"}'

# With source language specified
curl -X POST http://localhost:3220/translate \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"text": "Bonjour le monde", "source_lang": "fr", "target_lang": "en"}'

📄 License

This project is licensed under AGPL-3.0.

Disclaimer

This project is not affiliated with any of the providers listed above. The names of the providers may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Scraping from free APIs may violate their respective EULA.