Translator and Language Detector APIs - Web APIs | MDN
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Translator and Language Detector APIs
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Translator and Language Detector APIs
Limited availability
This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.
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Experimental: This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.
Secure context: This feature is available only in secure contexts (HTTPS), in some or all supporting browsers.
The Translator and Language Detector APIs provide functionality to detect the language that text is written in, and to translate text into different languages, via a browser's own internal AI model (which may differ between browsers).
In this article
Concepts and usage
Interfaces
HTTP headers
Security considerations
Examples
Specifications
Browser compatibility
See also
Concepts and usage
Translating a body of text is a common task on today's web. Typical use cases include:
On-the-fly translation of an article that isn't available in your language.
Translating a user's support requests into a language the support agent understands.
Facilitating chats between users that don't speak each other's languages.
Detecting the language of a body of test is an important precursor for successful automated translation, but has other uses beyond direct translation. For example, it allows automatic UI configuration based on user text entry, ranging from updating UI and error strings, to automatically loading appropriate dictionaries for spell checking or curse word detection.
AI is well-suited to facilitating language detection and translation. The Translator and Language Detector APIs provide asynchronous (Promise-based) mechanisms for a website to detect languages and translate text via the browser's own internal AI model. This is useful and efficient because the browser handles the service, rather than the developer having to rely on the user downloading AI models, or host or pay for a cloud-based translation service.
Language detection is done via the LanguageDetector interface. A LanguageDetector object instance is created using the LanguageDetector.create() static method, then the detect() instance method is passed the text string to detect the language for.
Translation is done via the Translator interface. A Translator object instance is created using the Translator.create() static method, then the translate() instance method is passed the text string to translate.
You can cancel a pending create(), detect(), or translate() operation using an AbortController.
After a LanguageDetector or Translator instance has been created, you can release its assigned resources and stop any further activity by calling its LanguageDetector.destroy()/Translator.destroy() method. You are encouraged to do this after you've finished with the object as it can consume a lot of resources.
See Using the Translator and Language Detector APIs for a walkthrough of how to use the APIs.
Interfaces
LanguageDetector
Contains all the language detection functionality, including checking AI model availability, creating a new LanguageDetector instance, using it to detect a language, and more.
Translator
Contains all the translation functionality, including checking AI model availability, creating a new Translator instance, using it to create a translation, and more.
HTTP headers
Permissions-Policy; the language-detector directive
Controls access to the language detection functionality.
Where a policy specifically disallows its use, the LanguageDetector.availability() static method will return unavailable, and any attempts to call other LanguageDetector methods will fail with a NotAllowedError DOMException.
Permissions-Policy; the translator directive
Controls access to the translation functionality.
Where a policy specifically disallows its use, the Translator.availability() static method will return unavailable, and any attempts to call other Translator methods will fail with a NotAllowedError DOMException.
Security considerations
Creation of LanguageDetector and Translator objects requires that the user has recently interacted with the page (transient user activation is required).
Access to the API is also controlled via language-detector and translator Permissions-Policy directives.
Examples
For a full example, see Using the Translator and Language Detector APIs.
Specifications
Specification
Unknown specification
Browser compatibility
Enable JavaScript to view this browser compatibility table.
See also
Language detection with built-in AI on developer.chrome.com (2025)
Translation with built-in AI on developer.chrome.com (2025)
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This page was last modified on May 18, 2026 by MDN contributors.
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