EU Commission’s Free Machine Translation Service
eTranslation is the European Commission’s machine translation service, providing free automated translation for EU public administrations, businesses, and citizens. Launched as part of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) program, eTranslation supports all 24 official EU languages plus Norwegian and Icelandic, offering over 550 language combinations. The service is specifically designed for translating administrative, legal, and technical documents common in EU contexts, with neural machine translation technology trained on EU institutional texts and terminology.
eTranslation can be accessed via web interface for document and text translation, or integrated into applications via REST API and web services for automated workflows. The service supports various file formats including Microsoft Office documents, PDFs, HTML, and plain text. Key features include domain-specific translation models optimized for different sectors, confidentiality guarantees with no data retention after translation, unlimited free usage for public sector entities, and quality comparable to commercial services for EU-domain content. eTranslation is particularly valuable for cross-border public services, e-procurement platforms, legal document translation, and citizen communication in multilingual EU contexts. The service continuously improves through feedback and new training data from EU institutions. Unlike commercial translation services, eTranslation doesn’t track users, store translations, or use submitted data for improving models, ensuring complete privacy. As an EU-funded infrastructure project, eTranslation represents digital sovereignty in language technology, reducing dependence on non-European AI services for critical translation needs.
