The Complete Guide to Translation APIs: How to Automate Multilingual Workflows for Your Business

Who this is for: Developers evaluating translation APIs, product managers building multilingual software, business leaders at law firms, financial institutions, SaaS companies, or any organization that needs to translate documents, websites, or content at scale – and wants to stop doing it manually.

Table of Contents

What Is a Translation API?

A translation API (Application Programming Interface) is a software bridge that lets your application, website, CMS, or business platform send content to a translation service and receive translated output – automatically, programmatically, and at scale.

Instead of manually logging into a translation portal, uploading files, waiting, and downloading results, an API wires translation directly into your existing workflow. Your content management system submits new blog posts. Your legal platform sends contracts. Your SaaS product syncs updated UI strings. All without anyone touching a file.

The core translation API workflow looks like this:

1. Your system sends content – a file, a block of text, or a document – along with the source language and target language(s)

2. The translation service processes it: via machine translation, professional human translators, or a hybrid of both

3. Translated content is returned to your system via webhook callback, direct download, or polling

Modern translation APIs support dozens of file formats, hundreds of language pairs, and multiple quality tiers – from instant machine translation to fully human-reviewed professional translation – all accessible through the same API endpoint. MotaWord's API supports 110+ languages and 50+ file formats.

Why businesses use a translation API instead of a traditional agency

Traditional translation workflows are slow by design. An agency receives an email, a project manager creates a job, assigns translators, follows up, reviews, and delivers – often over days. An API collapses that entirely. You submit at 9am; human translators begin within minutes; you receive a completed document the same day. For businesses handling ongoing translation needs – legal firms, SaaS companies, publishers, financial institutions – the efficiency gains are substantial.

Translation APIs also remove the manual coordination layer entirely. No emails, no purchase orders, no chasing status updates. Your system knows when a translation is done because it receives a webhook. Cost tracking is automatic. Volume discounts apply programmatically. The whole workflow scales without adding headcount.

Machine Translation APIs vs. Human Translation APIs: What's the Difference?

This is the most important distinction to understand before choosing a translation API – and most comparison guides gloss over it.

Pure machine translation APIs

Services like Google Cloud Translation, Microsoft Azure Translator, DeepL API, and Amazon Translate use neural machine translation (NMT) engines to produce instant, automated output. They are extremely fast – translations return in milliseconds – and priced per character or per million characters.

These are the right tool for:

• Very high-volume, low-stakes content: internal chats, user-generated reviews, product metadata, search indexes

• Real-time translation of user-generated content where speed matters more than perfection

• First-pass drafts that a human editor will review internally

• Development and testing environments

• Datasets and AI training content

The tradeoff is quality. Neural MT is remarkably good for common language pairs and general content, but it degrades meaningfully in specialized domains – legal, medical, financial, technical – where precise terminology matters. It also struggles with language pairs that lack large training corpora, with ambiguous sentence structures, and with culturally specific content that requires adaptation rather than literal translation. For anything customer-facing, regulated, or legally binding, raw MT output frequently requires significant post-editing.

Human translation APIs

A human translation API automates the workflow – submission, tracking, delivery – while routing content to professional human translators for the actual translation work. The API experience is identical to MT: submit content, get translation back. But behind the scenes, a vetted linguist with subject matter expertise is doing the work.

MotaWord's API is built on a collaborative human translation platform with a network of professional translators working simultaneously on projects. This collaborative model – multiple translators working in parallel on a single document with shared translation memories and glossaries – is why MotaWord can deliver human-quality translation faster than traditional agencies, while still offering true professional accuracy.

The hybrid approach: MTPE

Machine Translation Post-Editing (MTPE) is increasingly the sweet spot for professional B2B translation. MT produces a first draft; a human translator (or multiple human translators simultaneously over a shared translation workspace) reviews, corrects, and refines it. The result: professional-quality output at a fraction of full human translation cost and time.

MotaWord's API supports all three tiers through one integration:

• Full human translation – every segment translated and proofread by professional linguists, no MT involvement

• MTPE – MT draft + human post-editing, the best balance of cost, speed, and quality for most business content

• Machine translation – pure MT for internal, high-volume, or low-stakes content

You can build one API integration and route different content types to the appropriate tier. Legal contracts go to full human translation. Product descriptions go to MTPE. Internal Slack message archives go to MT. Same API, same integration, different quality settings per request.

What Can You Do With MotaWord's Translation API?

MotaWord's API is a full translation platform API – not just a text translation endpoint. Here is what it enables:

Document translation at scale

Submit files directly via API and receive fully translated, formatted documents in return. This is the core use case for law firms, financial institutions, healthcare providers, publishers, and enterprise teams who deal with high volumes of business documents.

Formatting is fully preserved. Tables, headers, footnotes, numbered lists, and page layout come back intact in the translated version. You don't receive a raw text dump – you receive a properly formatted DOCX, PDF, or whatever format you submitted.

For scanned PDFs, MotaWord's API supports OCR (optical character recognition), automatically extracting text from scanned documents before translation and re-embedding the translated text in the output.

Website and app localization

For websites and web applications with dynamic content, the API enables continuous localization: every time you update a page, publish a post, or deploy a new feature, your content can be automatically submitted for translation and returned in all your target languages – without anyone touching a file.

For teams who don't want to write API code, MotaWord Active is a no-code website translation layer that connects to your existing site and serves translated content dynamically, with full hreflang implementation for international SEO. It works with any CMS or custom-built site.

Software localization (i18n)

For SaaS products and mobile apps, the API handles standard software localization formats: JSON, XLIFF, PO files, and others. Submit your string files, receive translated versions back, slot them into your i18n library. It integrates naturally into CI/CD pipelines – translation runs as part of your build or release process rather than as a separate manual workflow.

Glossaries and terminology management

Attach custom glossaries and style guides to projects via the API to enforce consistent terminology across translations. Your brand names, product names, legal terms, and industry-specific vocabulary are handled exactly as you specify – by every translator, on every project.

Corporate accounts can maintain a global account-level glossary that automatically applies to all projects submitted under the account. This is particularly valuable for organizations that have built up specific terminology over years and need it applied consistently regardless of which translator works on a given project.

Translation memory

Every project builds a translation memory specific to your account. When you resubmit content with matching or similar segments – updated documentation, revised contracts, new software releases – previously translated segments are automatically applied. You only pay to translate new or changed content. Over time, translation memory significantly reduces both the cost and turnaround time of repeat projects. The longer you use MotaWord, the more efficiently your API submissions run.

Instant quoting

Before submitting a project, the API returns an instant price estimate and turnaround time based on word count, language pairs, file format, and quality tier. This is useful for building cost-estimation features into your own platform – a legal portal that shows clients the cost before they confirm, or a procurement system that pre-approves translation spend based on the quote.

Real-time progress and webhooks

The API exposes real-time project progress. Your system can poll for status, or – better – receive webhook notifications at each project milestone: when translators accept the project, at percentage completion milestones, and when the translation is ready for download. This means your downstream workflows (notifications, document management, case updates) trigger automatically when translations complete.

Supported File Formats

MotaWord's API accepts 50+ file formats across every major business document category:

Office documents: DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, DOC, XLS, PPT, ODT, ODS, ODP, RTF

Web and code: HTML, XML, JSON, XLIFF, PO/POT, YAML, STRINGS, RESX, TS

Publishing and design: InDesign (IDML), FrameMaker (MIF), QuarkXPress

PDF: Standard PDF with embedded text, and scanned PDFs (via OCR)

Subtitles and media: SRT, VTT, SBV, DFXP, TTML

Other: TXT, CSV, Markdown

If your file format is not listed, contact MotaWord – custom format support can be arranged for high-volume accounts.

Supported Languages

MotaWord supports 110+ languages, including all major world languages and many regional variants. A selection of commonly requested languages:

European: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Polish, Czech, Romanian, Hungarian, Greek, Bulgarian, Croatian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian

Asian: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Malay, Tagalog, Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Tamil, Punjabi

Middle Eastern: Arabic (Modern Standard and regional variants), Hebrew, Persian/Farsi, Turkish

Others: Russian, Ukrainian, Swahili, Amharic, Khmer, Lao, and many more

For language pairs with strong demand but less common availability, MotaWord's vendor team can source and train qualified translators typically within two weeks of a request.

How the API Works: A Technical Overview

MotaWord's API is a REST API using standard JSON request/response formats. Authentication uses OAuth 2.0 client credentials flow. All traffic is over HTTPS.

Core workflow

1. Get a quote (optional)

GET /projects/quote

Returns estimated price and turnaround for a given set of files and language pairs. Use this to build pre-submission cost estimates into your platform.

2. Create a project

Submit your file(s), source language, target language(s), quality tier (human, MTPE, or MT), glossary ID (optional), style guide ID (optional), and callback URL.

3. Monitor progress

Returns current project status and completion percentage. Or use webhooks – MotaWord will POST to your callback URL at each milestone.

4. Download the translation

Returns the fully translated, formatted document in the same format as the original submission.

Webhooks

When your project reaches completion (or hits milestones you configure), MotaWord sends a POST to your callback_url with the project ID, status, and download link. This is the recommended approach for production integrations – it's more efficient than polling and triggers your downstream workflows instantly.

Sandbox mode

MotaWord provides a sandbox environment for development and testing. Projects submitted in sandbox mode are not charged and not dispatched to real translators. Sandbox mode can be enabled in the Developer Dashboard or in plugin settings. This lets you build and test your integration thoroughly before going live.

SDKs and CLI

In addition to direct REST API calls, MotaWord provides:

• [CLI tool] – a command-line interface for scriptable workflows, batch processing, and CI/CD pipeline integration. Available for macOS, Linux, and Windows.

• Platform plugins – pre-built integrations for WordPress, Drupal, and other platforms (see Integrations below)

Full API reference and documentation is at docs.motaword.com.

Authentication and Getting Started

Step 1: Create a developer account

Register at motaword.com/developer and create an API app in your Developer Dashboard. Each app gets a Client ID and Client Secret.

Step 2: Get an access token

MotaWord uses OAuth 2.0 client credentials flow:

curl -X POST https://api.motaword.com/token \
  -d "grant_type=client_credentials" \
  -d "client_id=YOUR_CLIENT_ID" \
  -d "client_secret=YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET"

This returns a bearer token. Include it as Authorization: Bearer {token} in all subsequent API requests.

Step 3: Submit your first project

curl -X POST https://api.motaword.com/projects \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  -F "source_language=en" \
  -F "target_languages[]=es" \
  -F "target_languages[]=fr" \
  -F "target_languages[]=de" \
  -F "callback_url=https://yourapp.com/webhooks/translation" \
  -F "documents[]=@contract.docx"

Step 4: Receive the translation

When MotaWord calls your webhook, download the translated file:

curl -X GET https://api.motaword.com/projects/{project_id}/documents/{document_id}/download \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  --output translated_contract_es.docx

For full documentation, error codes, and advanced options see docs.motaword.com.

Ready-Made Integrations: No API Code Required

If you don't want to build a custom API integration from scratch, MotaWord offers a growing library of plug-and-play connectors. All of them run on the same API under the hood – you get the same quality, same languages, same translation memory – just without writing code.

See the full integrations directory.

WordPress

The MotaWord WordPress plugin connects your WordPress site to MotaWord directly. Submit pages, posts, or custom post types from within the WordPress admin panel. Translated content is returned directly into your multilingual setup (compatible with WPML, Polylang, and other multilingual plugins). Ideal for content-heavy sites, news publishers, and e-commerce stores.

Drupal

The Drupal integration works as a translation provider for the TMGMT (Translation Management Tool) module. Configure MotaWord as your provider in the TMGMT settings; content flows through the same translation workflow you already have, now powered by MotaWord's human translator network. Supports sandbox mode for testing.

Clio (Legal Practice Management)

Law firms using Clio can submit documents for certified translation directly from within their case management workflow. No file exports, no switching platforms. Translated documents return directly to the case file.

Docketwise (Immigration Law)

The Docketwise integration is purpose-built for immigration attorneys. Client documents – passports, birth certificates, court orders, immigration filings – can be submitted for certified translation from within Docketwise, tracked in real time, and delivered back to the case without leaving the platform. MotaWord also offers academic evaluation services for credential assessment, available through the same workflow.

Google Drive

The Google Drive integration lets teams submit documents for translation directly from Drive folders, without leaving Google Workspace. Translated files are returned to your specified Drive location.

Google Chrome Extension

The MotaWord Chrome extension lets users submit any web page or highlighted text for translation directly from the browser toolbar – useful for ad hoc translation needs without switching tools.

CLI Tool

For engineers and DevOps teams, the MotaWord CLI provides a fully scriptable interface to the API. Ideal for batch processing, scheduled jobs, and CI/CD pipeline integration. Available as a pre-built binary for macOS, Linux, and Windows, with configuration managed via a credentials file.

Laravel Middleware

For teams building on Laravel, MotaWord provides an HTTP Application Middleware integration that proxies incoming HTTP requests through MotaWord Active Serve for on-the-fly translation. Full SEO compatibility. Reference implementation: github.com/motaword/active-laravel.

Wix

The Wix integration embeds MotaWord Active on any Wix site via custom code injection, enabling site-wide translation without rebuilding your site.

How to Choose a Translation API: 7 Questions to Ask

Before committing to a translation API, most guides tell you to compare pricing tables. That's the wrong starting point. Here are the questions that actually matter:

1. Do you need human quality, or is machine translation acceptable? For customer-facing content, legal or regulatory documents, financial filings, or anything where accuracy has real consequences, pure MT APIs are likely insufficient. If your content falls into those categories, you need an API with a human translation tier – like MotaWord's.

2. What file formats does your content live in? If you're translating DOCX and PDF files with complex formatting, you need an API that preserves formatting on output – not just one that translates raw text. MotaWord's API preserves tables, headers, footnotes, and layout across 50+ formats. Most pure MT APIs strip formatting entirely.

3. Do you need consistency across projects? If the same terminology needs to appear consistently across dozens of documents or months of content, you need translation memory and glossary support. Pure MT APIs don't accumulate TM across sessions. MotaWord's TM grows with every project you submit.

4. What volume are you working with, and how often does content change? High-frequency, high-volume translation of relatively simple content (e-commerce product descriptions, support tickets, user reviews) favors MT for cost reasons. High-stakes, lower-frequency translation (contracts, reports, filings) justifies human quality. MotaWord handles both, letting you mix tiers within one account.

5. Do you need certified translations? Only some APIs support certified translation – a signed certificate from a professional translator attesting to accuracy. This is required mainly by law firms for arbitration or court related content and by immigration law firms for USCIS immigration submissions, court filings, academic credential evaluations, and many international business contexts. MotaWord offers certified translation services via API.

6. How important is data security and confidentiality? Legal, medical, and financial documents often contain sensitive personal or proprietary information. Understand where data is stored, whether it's used for model training, and what the provider's security certifications are. MotaWord operates under strict confidentiality agreements with its translator network and does not use client content for MT training. MotaWord is also SOC 2 Type II certified.

7. Do you need an integration with your existing platform? If your team already works in a specific CMS, practice management tool, or cloud storage platform, a native integration is faster and safer than a custom API build. See MotaWord's integrations directory for current connectors.

Key Use Cases by Industry

Law Firms and Legal Departments

Legal translation is among the highest-stakes translation use cases. Contract terms, affidavits, discovery documents, immigration filings, and court submissions must be accurate – errors carry direct legal and financial consequences.

MotaWord's API integrates with both Clio and Docketwise, the two most widely used legal practice management platforms. Attorneys can submit documents for certified translation from within their case management workflow without switching tools or managing files manually.

For immigration law firms specifically, MotaWord handles the full volume of USCIS-required certified translation – birth certificates, marriage certificates, passports, diplomas, court orders – with turnaround options as fast as same-day. The API means high-volume immigration practices can process translation as part of their automated case intake flow rather than managing it as a separate manual step.

Read more: Legal Translation Services · Certified Translations for USCIS

SaaS and Technology Companies

Software products that serve international markets need continuous localization – every sprint, every deployment, every feature release generates new strings to translate. An API that integrates into the build pipeline means localization keeps pace with development rather than lagging behind it.

The MotaWord API accepts XLIFF, JSON, PO, and other standard i18n formats directly, returns translated files in the same format, and can be triggered via CLI or HTTP call from any CI/CD system. New strings get submitted when a build is tagged; translated strings return before the release goes out.

For website localization, MotaWord Active provides a fully automated, SEO-compatible translation layer for any web application – including hreflang implementation, automatic content detection, and dynamic delivery of translated content. See how OnePlus implemented website translation at global scale.

Read more: MotaWord Active – Website Localization · Integrations · Technical Translation

Financial Services

Annual reports, fund prospectuses, regulatory filings, investor communications, and compliance documentation require precise, confidential translation across multiple jurisdictions and languages simultaneously.

The MotaWord API handles high-volume financial document translation – DOCX, PDF, XLSX – with formatting fully preserved, terminology applied consistently via glossary, and translation memory reducing costs on repeated document types (quarterly reports that share boilerplate language, for example). See the Trading 212 case study for a concrete example of financial translation at scale.

Read more: Financial Translation Services

Enterprise Content, Documentation, and Publishing

Organizations maintaining large content libraries – technical documentation, employee handbooks, training materials, product manuals – benefit enormously from API-driven translation. Content is submitted programmatically when updated, translation memory accumulates across every version, and the cost per word decreases substantially over time as TM leverage increases.

Iron Mountain used MotaWord to handle large-scale document translation for their enterprise content management workflows. Nielsen used MotaWord for market research translation – a content type with highly specific terminology requirements that benefit from glossary enforcement.

Read more: Technical Translation Services · Businesses

Healthcare and Life Sciences

Patient-facing materials, clinical trial documentation, regulatory submissions, informed consent forms, and pharmaceutical labeling require certified, domain-accurate translation. Errors in medical translation carry patient safety implications and regulatory risk.

MotaWord's translator network includes subject matter experts in medical and pharmaceutical content, and the API supports the document formats commonly used in healthcare workflows. Read more: Healthcare and Life Sciences Translation · Medical Translation Services

Retail, CPG, and E-commerce

Product descriptions, category pages, packaging content, and marketing materials for international markets all need localization that goes beyond literal translation – adapting tone, cultural references, and selling language for each market. The MotaWord API integrates with e-commerce platforms to handle this at the scale required for large product catalogs. Read more: Retail and CPG Translation

Public Sector and School Districts

Government agencies, school districts, and public institutions that serve multilingual communities have ongoing translation obligations – parent communications, legal notices, public health information, benefit enrollment materials. MotaWord's school districts translation program and public sector solutions are built for the volume, compliance, and cost constraints of the public sector.

MotaWord API vs. Google Translate, DeepL, and Azure Translator

This is the question B2B buyers ask most often. Here's an objective breakdown:

The key distinction: Google, DeepL, and Azure are machine translation infrastructure. They're excellent at what they do – instant automated translation at massive scale. But they don't offer human review, don't accumulate institutional translation memory, can't provide certified translations, and can't be the right answer for content where accuracy matters legally, medically, or financially.

MotaWord is a professional translation platform with an API. The API gives you the same automation and integration advantages as a pure MT API, while giving you access to human translation quality when your content requires it. For many B2B translation use cases, that distinction is what matters.

Translation Memory, Glossaries, and Style Guides

These three features separate a professional translation API from a commodity text translation endpoint. For B2B use, they're often more important than raw translation speed.

Translation Memory (TM)

Translation memory stores every previously translated segment in a database associated with your account. When you submit new content, the API automatically matches segments against your TM at three levels:

• 100% match – identical segment has been translated before; applied automatically, significant discount

• Fuzzy match – segment is similar but not identical (e.g., a sentence with one changed word); partially applied with human review, partial discount

• No match – new segment; translated fresh

Over time, as your TM grows, an increasing proportion of submitted content matches existing translations. This reduces cost, speeds up delivery, and ensures consistency across documents. A law firm translating hundreds of immigration filings will find that standard boilerplate – declaration text, form labels, address fields – reaches near-100% TM leverage within months. An enterprise maintaining product documentation will see translation costs for annual updates drop substantially once the initial library is translated.

Glossaries

A glossary is a list of terms with their approved translations. You define it; every translator on every project is required to follow it. This matters most for:

• Brand names and product names that should not be translated

• Industry-specific terminology with exact approved equivalents

• Legal defined terms that must be rendered consistently

• Regulatory labels with specific required translations

Glossaries can be attached per-project via the API, or maintained at account level for automatic application. Corporate accounts can use the global glossary endpoint to update their account glossary programmatically.

Style Guides

A style guide gives translators instructions about tone, register, formatting conventions, and handling of specific content types. Upload yours once; it applies to every project. This is especially useful for marketing content, customer communications, and any content where brand voice matters in the target language.

Pricing: How Translation API Costs Work

Translation API pricing varies significantly by provider and model. Here's how to think about it.

Machine translation APIs (Google, DeepL, Azure)

Priced per character or per million characters. Very low unit cost – typically \$0--\$20 per million characters depending on tier and provider. Predictable, scalable. No per-project overhead.

The catch: quality is fixed. You can't pay more for better output. And post-editing costs – if you have a human editor correct MT errors – often dwarf the MT API cost itself for professional content.

Human translation APIs (MotaWord)

Priced per source word, by quality tier and language pair. MotaWord offers instant quotes via both the API and the website at motaword.com/quote.

Factors that affect price:

• Quality tier – full human translation costs more than MTPE, which costs more than MT

• Language pair – common pairs (EN↔ES, EN↔FR) are typically less expensive than rare pairs

• Volume – higher word counts often receive lower per-word rates

• Translation memory leverage – existing TM reduces the billable word count on each project

• Turnaround time – standard delivery vs. rush delivery

The real cost comparison to consider: When evaluating MT API pricing vs. MotaWord, factor in post-editing. If your team spends 30 minutes per document cleaning up MT output before it's usable, the \"cheap\" MT API becomes expensive once you account for labor. MTPE via MotaWord's API often delivers professional-quality output at a total cost lower than MT + internal post-editing – especially at scale.

Get an instant quote for your content at motaword.com/quote or via the /projects/quote API endpoint.

Security and Confidentiality

For B2B translation – especially legal, financial, and medical content – security and confidentiality are non-negotiable requirements.

What MotaWord does:

• All API traffic is transmitted over HTTPS/TLS

• Translator confidentiality agreements – every translator in MotaWord's network operates under strict confidentiality obligations

• Client content is not used for machine translation training or shared with third parties

• Corporate accounts can maintain private translation memories that are never shared across accounts

• Data handling policies are available on request for enterprise and regulated-industry customers

For organizations with specific compliance requirements (HIPAA, GDPR, legal privilege), discuss your requirements with MotaWord's team before integration. Contact: motaword.com/contact.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a translation API and how does it work? A translation API is a programmatic interface that lets your software submit content to a translation service and receive translated output automatically. Your system sends a file or text with source and target languages; the API returns the translation. MotaWord's API routes content to professional human translators, MTPE workflows, or machine translation depending on the quality tier you select.

What's the best translation API for business use? The right answer depends on your content type. For customer-facing, legal, regulated, or high-accuracy content, MotaWord's API is purpose-built for professional B2B use – combining API automation with human translation quality. For extremely high-volume, low-stakes internal content, pure MT APIs like Google or DeepL may be more cost-effective. Many businesses use both: MotaWord for professional content, MT APIs for internal or disposable content.

What file formats does the MotaWord translation API support? 50+ formats including DOCX, PDF (with OCR for scanned documents), XLSX, PPTX, HTML, XML, XLIFF, JSON, PO, InDesign (IDML), FrameMaker (MIF), SRT, VTT, and many more. See the full file formats list.

How many languages does MotaWord's API support? 110+ languages and language variants. See the full languages list.

Can I get certified translation through the API? Yes. MotaWord offers certified translation services accepted by USCIS, federal and state courts, universities, and international bodies. Certified translation can be requested via API.

What is MTPE and how is it different from full human translation? Machine Translation Post-Editing (MTPE) produces a machine translation draft, then has a professional human translator review, correct, and refine it. It's faster and less expensive than full human translation, with significantly better quality than raw MT. Full human translation has professional translators working from scratch with no MT involvement. Both are available via MotaWord's API.

Is there a sandbox or test environment? Yes. MotaWord provides a sandbox mode for development and testing. Projects in sandbox mode are not charged and not dispatched to real translators. Enable it in the Developer Dashboard.

Does the API support webhooks? Yes. Specify a callback_url in your API request. MotaWord will POST a notification to that URL when your project is complete, or at configurable status milestones.

How does translation memory reduce costs? TM stores previously translated segments. When new content contains matching segments – identical (100% match) or similar (fuzzy match) – those segments are applied automatically with cost reductions proportional to the match level. TM leverage increases over time as your translation history grows.

Can I attach glossaries via the API? Yes. Glossaries can be attached per-project. Corporate accounts can maintain a global account-level glossary via the global glossary endpoint that automatically applies to all projects.

Is there a CLI for automated/scripted workflows? Yes. The MotaWord CLI provides a fully scriptable interface available for macOS, Linux, and Windows – ideal for CI/CD pipelines, scheduled batch processing, and developer automation.

How do I integrate MotaWord with WordPress or Drupal? MotaWord provides native plugins for both. The WordPress plugin works with existing multilingual setups. The Drupal integration connects as a provider for the TMGMT module. Both use the same API credentials as a direct integration.

Does MotaWord work with legal practice management software? Yes. Native integrations exist for Clio and Docketwise, the two leading legal practice management platforms. Law firms can submit documents for translation directly from within their existing case workflow.

How do I get started? Create a developer account at motaword.com/developer, generate your Client ID and Client Secret, and follow the getting started guide in our documentation. A sandbox environment is available immediately.

Get Started with MotaWord's Translation API

Whether you're a developer building multilingual software, a law firm automating document translation, a SaaS company expanding internationally, or an enterprise managing a large content library – MotaWord's API gives you professional-grade translation wired directly into your workflow.

Start building:

• Developer Portal →

• API Documentation →

• Getting Started Guide →

Explore the platform:

• All Integrations →

• MotaWord Active (Website Localization) →

• Supported File Formats →

• Supported Languages →

• Features Overview →

Talk to us:

• Get a Free Quote →

• Contact Our Team →

Related reading on the MotaWord blog:

• Machine Translation + Post-Editing (MTPE): The Business Guide →

• Human Translation Services →

• MotaWord Active: Instant Website Translation →

• Certified Translations for USCIS →

• MotaWord for Businesses →

OYTUN TEZ - Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at MotaWord

Translation studies scholar with a thesis on machine translation -- overall technologist and obsessed with smart, seamless translation flows.