Legal
Privacy Policy
This policy covers one website: a free translator that has no accounts, no cookies and no analytics. Most of what you read here is an explanation of things that do not happen.
1. The honest summary
localStorage on your device. We have no copy.2. Scope
This policy applies to the Translate X website, including the translator page, this Privacy Policy, the Terms of Service, and the /api/translate endpoint used when a translation has to be routed through this domain. It does not apply to any other website you visit from a link on this site — those have their own policies, and we do not control them.
3. Who runs this
Translate X is run by one individual, not a company. In data-protection terms that person is the controller for the limited personal data this site handles. The only way to reach them is by email, at the address in Section 18. There is no postal address because there is no office and no company entity to send post to.
4. What we deliberately do not collect
Most of this policy is shorter than you would expect because of a list of things that are never gathered. Translate X does not:
- ask for, store or require an email address, name, username, phone number, password or any credential;
- collect your postal address, payment details, or any government identifier — there is no payment, because the Service is free;
- run third-party analytics or session-recording scripts;
- load advertising networks, remarketing pixels, or social media trackers;
- use tracking cookies, web beacons, canvas fingerprinting or device fingerprinting;
- build a profile of you, or follow you to another site;
- sell, rent, trade or license your data to anyone;
- email you, because we have no way to address you.
What does arrive here is only what any website needs in order to load a page: described in Sections 6 and 10.
5. What stays on your device
To remember your choices between visits, the site saves a few values in your browser's localStorage. This is a storage area belonging to your browser. It is not sent to us, it is not accessible to us, and it is not a cookie.
| Key | What it remembers | Contains personal data? |
|---|---|---|
translate.langs | Your source and target language choice. | No |
translate.theme | Whether you picked light, dark, or match-system. | No |
translate.layout | Whether you prefer the side-by-side or stacked layout. | No |
translate.auto | Whether translation runs automatically while you type. | No |
translate.history | Up to 40 recent translations: the text you entered, the result, the language pair and a timestamp. | Possibly. It holds whatever you typed, which may include personal or confidential content. |
translate.viaProxy | A short-lived flag in sessionStorage, used to remember that this session's network prefers the fallback route. Gone when you close the tab. | No |
6. What happens when you translate
Every time you request a translation, this is the whole sequence:
Your browser sends your text and the source and target languages over HTTPS, straight from your device to the third-party machine-translation engine.
The engine returns the translation, plus the source language it detected if you chose automatic detection, directly to your browser.
Your browser displays it. If history is switched on, a copy goes into your browser's local storage on your device.
The text exists in your browser's memory and in the engine's hands for as long as it takes to produce the answer. That is unavoidable: something has to read the text in order to translate it. We keep no server-side copy, no database of submissions, and no translation memory built from what you typed.
Fallback routing. If your network or browser blocks that direct connection, the request is retried once through a serverless endpoint on this domain, hosted on Cloudflare Pages. That endpoint checks the request, enforces the 5,000-character cap, and forwards it to the same engine. The text therefore passes through Cloudflare as well on that path. It is used only after the direct route fails, and it is tried first for the rest of the session once it has worked.
Files. Dropping a text file onto the page reads it locally with the browser's file API and puts its contents in the text box. The file itself is never uploaded anywhere. Files over 512 KB or with a non-text extension are refused.
7. Share links
The Share button builds a link that contains your text (up to 2,000 characters) and your language pair as URL query parameters, and then either hands that link to your phone's share sheet or puts it on your clipboard. Nothing is uploaded to generate it.
Opening a shared link puts its q, from and to parameters straight into your text box, so the text is in your history before you translate anything. Clearing your history, or clearing site data, removes it.
8. Read-aloud
The listen buttons hand the text to your operating system's built-in speech engine — Speech Synthesis on browsers, AVSpeechSynthesizer or equivalent elsewhere. The audio is produced on your device. We do not receive an audio stream, do not store the audio, and do not measure what you listen to.
9. Who receives your data
| Recipient | What they get | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Third-party translation engine | Your text, plus the source and target languages. | It cannot translate text it has not read. This happens on every translation. |
| Cloudflare Pages | Connection data always; the text of a request only on the fallback path in Section 6. | Hosting and delivering the site, running the fallback endpoint, rate limiting and abuse prevention. |
| Your own browser and OS | Local preferences and history; text passed to the system speech engine. | Stays on your device. We never receive it. |
| Anyone you send a link to | Whatever text the Share link contains. | Section 7. This one is entirely your doing. |
Beyond that list, your data is not shared. In particular, there is no advertising, analytics or data-broker recipient.
10. Hosting and network logs
Any website that serves a page has to record enough about the connection to do it. When you load the site, Cloudflare may process and retain:
- your IP address and the region it resolves from;
- the timestamp, the path requested and the HTTP status returned;
- your browser's user-agent string and device type;
- referrer information and country or region indicators;
- security signals such as IP reputation and bot-detection verdicts.
That data is used to serve the page, enforce rate limits, block attacks and diagnose faults. Cloudflare also caches static assets — this site's CSS, JavaScript and icons — on its edge network so pages load quickly. Cached assets never contain your text.
This connection data is not used to build a profile, to serve advertising, or to identify you across other websites. Hosting logs are kept for the short operational period the platform needs, then deleted or anonymised.
11. Cookies and analytics
There is no cookie banner on this site because there is nothing to consent to. Translate X sets no cookies of its own, and there are no advertising, analytics or cross-site tracking cookies.
The only browser storage involved is the localStorage in Section 5, which is not a cookie and is never transmitted. Note that if you use the Share feature, your text can still be recorded by your own browser's history and by whoever receives the link — that is Section 7, not cookie tracking.
12. How long anything is kept
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Text you submit for translation | Held in memory only for as long as it takes to produce and return the response. No historical store of submissions exists. |
| Your history | Until you clear it — via Clear all, by deleting individual entries, or by clearing site data. We hold no copy. |
| Your preferences | Until you change or clear them. We hold no copy. |
| The fallback-route flag | One hour, or until you close the tab. |
| Hosting and network logs | Only as long as the hosting platform needs them for security and troubleshooting, then deleted or anonymised. |
| Anything tied to an account | There are no accounts, so there is nothing of the kind to retain. |
13. Deleting your data
Because there is no account and no server-side store, deleting your data is something you do yourself, and it is immediate rather than a request that takes thirty days. Three options, in increasing order of thoroughness:
- Just the translations — open the history panel and press Clear all. Preferences stay.
- One translation — hover an entry in the history panel and use its delete button.
- Everything on this site — clear site data for
translate-textx.pages.devin your browser's settings. That removes history, preferences, and the flag in Section 5. In Chrome or Edge this is the padlock or tune icon in the address bar → Site settings → Delete data; in Firefox it is the padlock → Clear cookies and site data → Clear.
We cannot delete data on your device for you, because we never had it. Nor can we retrieve it for you if you clear your browser: it exists nowhere else. If you need something back before you clear, copy it out first.
One thing genuinely outside your control: if the fallback route was used, the text of that translation passed through Cloudflare as described in Section 6, and hosting logs are governed by Section 10. There is no stored copy of the text itself — only ordinary request records — but we are telling you rather than pretending otherwise.
14. Security
Measures taken on this site:
- everything is served over HTTPS, with HSTS, and the HTML is served with a content-security policy and a restrictive
frame-ancestorsso it cannot be embedded for clickjacking; - input validation and a 5,000-character cap on translation requests;
- rate limiting and abuse protection from the hosting platform;
- no third-party scripts at all — no analytics, no ads, no tag managers — which keeps the attack surface close to zero;
- no database containing translated text, because there is no database;
X-Content-Type-Options,Referrer-Policyand a permissions policy that disables camera, microphone and geolocation.
No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure. If an incident affecting your data happens and the law requires us to tell you, we will.
15. Your rights
Where the UK or EU GDPR applies to you, you have rights over personal data relating to you — access, correction, erasure, restriction, objection, portability, withdrawal of consent, and the right to complain to a regulator. In practice, here is how each one applies to this site:
| Right | How it applies here |
|---|---|
| Access | We hold no account and no user database, so there is usually nothing to hand over. Anything in Section 10 is ordinary hosting log data. |
| Rectification | Nothing we hold describes you, so there is nothing inaccurate to fix. Your own history entries are edited or deleted by you directly. |
| Erasure | Already covered: you can erase everything yourself, immediately, via Section 13. There is nothing server-side to erase. |
| Restriction / objection | Stop using the site, or block the network request to the translation engine in your browser. Both take effect at once. |
| Portability | Your history is already yours, in your own browser. Open the panel and copy what you want out. |
| Withdraw consent | Turn off automatic translation, clear history, or clear site data. All are self-service. |
| Complain | Write to us first. If you are unhappy with the reply, you may complain to the Information Commissioner's Office in the UK, or to the data protection authority where you live or work in the EEA. |
Legal bases, for completeness: sending your text to the translation engine is performance of a contract — it is the service you asked for; hosting, security logs and rate limiting rest on legitimate interests in operating and protecting the site; and storing preferences and history in your browser rests on consent, which you give by using the site and withdraw by clearing it.
16. Children
Translate X is a general-purpose translation tool and is not directed at children under 13, or under 16 where local law sets a higher age. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone, and because there are no accounts we do not knowingly hold a child's data.
If you believe a child has put personal information into the site, email us and we will look into the request logs — which, per Section 10, is about the only place anything could appear.
17. Changes
This policy may change when the site changes, when a supplier changes, or when the law does. The "Last updated" date at the top always reflects the current version.
If a change makes the Service collect something it did not collect before, this page will say so plainly rather than burying it in a diff. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept it.
18. Contact
One person runs this site, from an ordinary email account. There is no support desk, no postal address and no company registration to write to, because there is no company. Email is the channel:
Privacy and data requests
Describe the site, the browser you were using, what you would like to know or have removed, and roughly when. Please do not include sensitive personal details in the email itself — if a data request genuinely needs specifics, ask and they will be worked out in a reply.
If anything here was unclear, please ask rather than assuming. Ambiguity in a privacy policy is not a small thing.