Text
A two pane window. Paste or type, and it detects the source language and translates. Double tap Command plus C anywhere on the system to open it with your current selection already loaded.
Local Translate
Your translator runs on your Mac, not on somebody's server
Every mainstream translator sends your text to a server. That is fine for a restaurant menu. It is not fine for a supplier contract, a bank statement, or a message from your lawyer.
- $30
- Once, for life
- 0
- API keys needed
- 30
- Days offline grace
What it is
A model that lives on your machine
Local Translate runs the translation model on your own machine. Your text does not leave the Mac. There is no account to keep paying for, no API key to obtain, no monthly quota to run out of on a Sunday, and no network requirement once it is installed.
You install it, it downloads the model once, and after that it works with the network disconnected.
Four ways to use it
Text, screen, documents, web
Screen
Draw a box around anything on screen and the translation appears in place, over the original. This is how you read a user interface that has no language setting: an app in Chinese, a Korean banking page, a Japanese form, a photograph of a menu. It reads text out of pixels, so it works on things you cannot select or copy.
Documents
Translate a PDF and get a PDF back with the layout intact rather than a wall of raw text. Scanned documents are detected and read optically, so a photographed contract works as well as a digital one.
Web
A live page translation mode that rewrites pages as you browse, including pages that load content as you scroll. Useful on the sites that matter here: Taobao, 1688, Korean and Japanese portals, government sites that were never going to ship an English version.
There is also lt, a command line tool, for
translating files and piped text from a terminal or a script.
Why offline is the point
Not a feature. The whole architecture.
Privacy
Think about what you actually translate. A supplier quotation with your margins in it. An employment contract. A bank statement. A tenancy agreement. A message from a client. A medical result. A tax notice.
Pasting any of those into a cloud translator sends the contents to a third party, on their infrastructure, under their retention policy, in a jurisdiction you did not choose. For a business document that is a data disclosure, and if you have signed a confidentiality agreement it may be a breach of it. Most people do it anyway, because the alternative is not reading the document.
Local Translate removes the decision. There is no upload because there is no server. You can watch the network traffic and see nothing leave.
It works with no connection
On a plane. On a train through a tunnel. On hotel wifi that has stopped working. In a country where the translator you normally use is blocked, which includes the one you are probably thinking of, in the country this site is about.
A cloud translator is a service that happens to be useful. An offline translator is a tool you own.
No API key, no subscription, no metering
Nothing to sign up for beyond the licence itself, nothing that counts characters, nothing that expires at the end of the month, nothing that raises its price next year. It runs on your hardware, which means it costs us nothing per translation, which is why we can charge once and mean it.
In practice
What people here actually use it for
Sourcing on Taobao and 1688
Product listings, specification tables, seller messages. The listings are Chinese only and the specification tables are where the actual information is. Live page translation makes them readable while you browse rather than copying paragraphs back and forth.
Korean and Japanese banking and government sites
The hard case. Dense, official vocabulary, often will not load in a browser's built-in translator because of how they are built, and a mistake on a form has consequences. Screen capture translation handles them because it works on whatever is rendered.
Contracts and PDFs
A supplier agreement, a lease, a set of terms. Layout preserving translation means clauses stay numbered and tables stay tables, so you can compare the translation against the original line by line.
Menus and signs
Point the screen translator at a photograph. This is the everyday use, and it works without a connection, which is when you usually need it.
Chinese and Korean desktop applications
Software with no English option: an accounting package, a bank client, a manufacturer's configuration tool. Screen translation reads the interface directly.
Requirements and limits
Honesty about what it will not do
We would rather you knew this before buying than discovered it afterwards.
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| Machine | A Mac with Apple Silicon, meaning an M-series chip. The model runs on the machine's own neural hardware, which is what makes it fast enough to be usable. Intel Macs are not supported. |
| Disk | About 4 GB for the translation model, downloaded once on first run. The application itself is smaller. |
| Memory | Roughly 8 GB free while translating. On a 16 GB Mac this is unremarkable. The minimum supported configuration is being confirmed and is not published yet. |
| Network | One internet connection, once, to download the model and register the licence. After that it is offline for good. |
Where a cloud service still wins
Very large language coverage, and literary polish on European language pairs, where the best cloud engines remain excellent. Local Translate is strongest on Chinese, Korean and Japanese into English, which is what it was built for, and covers the major European languages well. The final shipped language list for the launch build is not published yet, and we will not quote a number we cannot stand behind.
Licence
One payment, and we mean once
- $30 USD, one payment, forever. No subscription, no renewal, no upgrade fee.
- $10 USD for the first 500 licences. When 500 are sold the price becomes $30. The counter on the buy page is the real number, not a marketing timer, and it does not reset.
- The price you pay and the date you paid are recorded on your account, so a buyer at $10 is provably a buyer at $10 if terms ever change.
- Three devices on one account, the same allowance as BIM VPN, and the same login. One account covers both products, so if you already have a VPN account you sign in with it and Local Translate appears.
- Offline grace. The application checks its licence when it has a connection and then keeps working offline for 30 days without needing to check again. An offline translator that stops working when it cannot reach a server would be a contradiction.
Buy
$10 while the first 500 last, then $30
One payment. Runs on your Mac. Your text stays there.