Automatic Translation fills the empty translation boxes in a language with machine translations from Google Translate, Azure AI Translator or DeepL. It works on all plans and uses AT characters, with 10 000 included in every account.

If you're translating strings with HTML or variables, note that machine translation engines are not renowned for their ability to preserve these, so syntax may not always come out as expected.

Who has access to Automatic Translation

All POEditor accounts, paid or free, have the Automatic Translation feature integrated. On a project level, it can be accessed by owners and admins. Contributors can also access it if the owner or an admin grants them access by going to Settings and setting Automatic Translation to Everyone in Advanced Settings.

If you're the project owner and would like to share the AT characters you purchased with other users, you can enable the Contributors Can Use Your AT Characters option in your Account Settings.

How Automatic Translation works

Automatic Translation uses machine translation characters with Google Translate, Azure AI Translator or DeepL to translate strings in your POEditor localization projects.

All accounts on POEditor come with 10 000 complimentary AT characters. However, since AT characters are not free of charge (the APIs from Google, Azure AI Translator and DeepL charge for use), if you need more, you will have to go to Account Settings > Profile > Automatic Translations Characters Left and then press the Manage link, where you can purchase one of our available packages.

The AT feature only completes the singular forms of the empty translation fields, and does not touch the already localized strings.

Automatic translations are marked with a specific flag in the translation pages, which appears on hover and can be clicked to remove it.

The flag can also be unchecked in bulk using the option Remove Automatic Flag at the bottom of the language page.

How to machine translate strings with Automatic Translation

In any language page, click Automatic Translation in the menu, then select the language pair for the machine translation engine ('I want to translate from' and 'to') and the translation source in your project (the strings you want to translate).

Do not set to use the texts in Project Terms if your project terms are keys/string ids! If you do, you will end up translating the keys. Choose any other option from the available languages.

For each translation engine, there are some Advanced Options you can choose from.

How to machine translate multiple languages in bulk

After machine translating one language, you can use the same setup to translate more languages in your project.

POEditor automatically detects the languages in your project that match those available with your machine translation provider. Confirm the matches and get machine translations for those languages by clicking the Translate now buttons.

Automatic Translation or AI translation?

Automatic Translation uses machine translation engines and POEditor's AT characters. AI translation uses your own account with an LLM provider, follows your custom prompts and your project's glossary, and can also adjust existing translations and evaluate their quality. You can use both in the same project.

Automatic Translation via API

You can get automatic translations via API, to further automate the machine translation process. More information is available in this article.

Automatic Translation using MCP

The official POEditor MCP server supports Automatic Translation with the translation engines available in POEditor. Use it to machine translate strings without starting the process from the language page.