About Translate

A domain-aware translation service built for high-stakes, specialized content, where general-purpose machine translation often falls short.

Most machine translation is general-purpose. It handles a restaurant menu well but struggles with something like a cholera-response field guide. Translate pairs a configurable AI translation model with a translation memory of real, human-verified examples, so every translation uses the right terminology, register, and phrasing for the subject.

One shared engine, three ways to use it:

• A simple two-box text translator.
• A document translator that returns your .docx fully translated, formatting intact.
• A REST API for translating at scale.

Where it came from

Baobab Tech built WASH AI, an assistant for water, sanitation & hygiene professionals. To let people ask questions and read answers in their own language, it needed a translation service that genuinely understood WASH terminology, and nothing off the shelf did. So we built one. We partnered with the UNICEF Global WASH Cluster and the German Toilet Organization (GTO) to ground it in real, expert-vetted material, and opened it up as a standalone service.

Starting with WASH, built to grow

The first live domain is WASH (Water, Sanitation & Hygiene), but Translate is a general-purpose service. Each domain is configured on the same engine rather than built as a separate product. New domains such as Nutrition, Health, and Logistics are added the same way: each gets its own translation-memory corpus, a subject-tuned prompt, and the best model for each language. One codebase supports many domains. (You can also choose General — no translation memory for off-domain text.)

How it works

• For each piece of text, Translate retrieves the most relevant human-verified examples from the domain's translation memory and gives them to the model as guidance. This helps it match how professionals in the field phrase things.
• That memory is curated independently by subject-matter experts and professional linguists, never from users' text. As it grows, every translation starts from a stronger reference.
• By default, everything runs on our own secure, self-hosted AI models, hosted in the EU. Your text is never sent to a big-tech AI cloud to be translated.
• We continuously evaluate new base models (such as Gemma) and adopt the best secure option available. Where a frontier model is clearly better for a specific language, we can enable it for that language as a deliberate choice.

Free to use

Translate is free for non-commercial social impact and humanitarian purposes, including humanitarian, non-profit, academic, and public-interest work. Start translating text right away, no account needed. After a handful of translations, we'll ask you to sign up, which is also free. Knowing who uses the tool is how we keep it running. Document translation requires a free account so your files stay private to you. High-volume use is available by arrangement.

Your privacy

We don't sell, share, or publish your content, and we don't display it to anyone else. We keep only minimal logs needed to operate and improve the tool. See our Privacy and Terms pages for the details.

Support & funding

• The WASH domain is funded by UNICEF in support of the Global WASH Cluster.
• The humanitarian sanitation literature and translation support is funded by the Gates Foundation, through the German Toilet Organization.

Built by Baobab Tech.