Purpose
eTranslation is an online machine translation service provided by the European Commission (EC).
For more information, please visit the page dedicated to machine translation services for public administration.
Procedure
How to register
Staff working for EU institutions or agencies can directly access eTranslation with their EU Login (formerly ECAS) credentials and therefore do not need to register.
Staff working for a public administration in an EU country, Iceland or Norway have to:
- sign up for a personal EU Login account and password with your professional email address
- email to let us know
- that you have an EU Login account
- what your job involves (your position)
- which public administrative body you work for (your employer)
- your full e-mail signature with your contact details
We'll create your eTranslation account and notify you that you can start using the service. Individual accesses will be automatically deactivated after 12 months if not used.
Since October 2016, public administrations in an EU country, Iceland or Norway can request to have eTranslation opened under their internet domain (the last part of the email address, e.g. @ec.europa.eu). This allows staff with such an email address to access eTranslation through EU Login, but without requesting individual access. To enable this, the administration's management should email CEFAT tools and services (see Contact and Support) with an official request form.
Access for teaching staff is limited to the European Master's in Translation (EMT) network.
How to access
Staff working for EU institutions or agencies can directly access eTranslation with their EU Login (formerly ECAS) credentials and therefore do not need to register.
Staff working for a public administration, Small and Medium-sized enterprise and University language faculty in an EU country, Iceland or Norway can self register here.
Individual accesses will be automatically deactivated after 12 months if not used.
Related links
Contact and support
For any questions concerning access to eTranslation's Web Interface and eTranslation's webservice and API, please contact the team in charge of machine translation for public administrations (EU Login required)
Implementation on sites on the europa.eu domain
The implementation of eTranslation on sites hosted on europa.eu follows the principle that users should be able to identify content that they are interested in, even if it is not in their language. In this context, machine translation requests will only be possible for the EU official languages not available on the page. eTranslation will not override human translations already available.
How it works
The Commission is piloting the use of eTranslation on Commission sites by means of a Webtools widget. More information will be provided at a later stage.
When to use it
eTranslation is best suited to informative content. It may be particularly useful for monolingual sites which are well visited and do not contain legally and contractually binding texts. Legal and contractual texts should be linked to in existing repositories where they are offered in all legally required languages.
When implemented on suitable sites, machine translation is user-triggered and clearly flagged. A disclaimer informs users that the content they are about to see is intended only to give a basic understanding of the page, and has not been reviewed by human translators.