Enable users to request translations

To follow step-by-step guidance for this task directly in the Google Cloud console, click Guide me:

Guide me

To enable translations, use the Google Cloud console to create a portal and add users. After you assign users to a portal, they can sign in to the portal and start translating documents.

Before you begin

Set up a project with billing and the Cloud Translation API enabled. Use that project for the following tasks.

Also, decide on which portal tier your users require: basic or advanced. Advanced-tier portals offer additional features at a different translation cost per page. When you create a portal, you select its tier, which cannot be changed later. You can create a portal in each tier if your users require both tiers.

Create a portal

Use the Google Cloud console to create translation portals for your users. A portal is the user interface where authorized users sign in and request translations.

  1. In the Translation Hub section of the Google Cloud console, go to the Portals page.

    Go to the Portals page

  2. Click Create portal, which opens the Create new portal pane.

  3. Specify a portal display name that describes the purpose of this portal.

  4. Select the portal tier and then click Continue.

  5. On the Configuration step, specify settings for your portal and then click Continue:

    1. Select Auto assign required role to portal service account.

      Translation Hub automatically assigns the Translation Hub Portal User IAM role to the portal service account. If you prefer to manually set IAM permissions, clear the auto assign role field. For more information, see Portal service account.

    2. To set a portal-specific retention policy (Preview), specify the number of days that Translation Hub retains your data. This value can't be changed or removed after you create the portal. To use the project policy or the default of 90 days (if no project policy is set), leave the retention policy field blank.

    3. For advanced-tier portals, you must associate a translation memory with the portal. You can create a new one or select an existing one.

  6. On the Assign users to portal step, you can add invited users to the portal, or you can add users to portals later when you invite them.

  7. Click Done to create the portal.

    After Translation Hub creates your portal, you can go to the Portals page to find and view details about your portal, such as its URL and its service account name.

You can choose to create additional portals. Multiple portals can be useful to manage different sets of users.

For example, imagine that you have one department that translates technical publications and another that translates legal documents. Because each department has different translation requirements and translation resources, each department could have their own portal. Each set of users would only have access to resources that are relevant to their area.

Portal service account

Translation Hub assigns each portal a unique service account and, by default, automatically assigns the Translation Hub Portal User role to the service account. Translation Hub uses the service account to authorize API calls to your project on behalf of portal users and translators. That way they can access translation resources in your Google Cloud project without possessing Google Cloud credentials.

The Translation Hub Portal User role grants translation-specific permissions. To see the exact set of permissions, see the role's assigned permissions in the Google Cloud console.

Invite users and add them to portals

Invite users to your Google Cloud project and then add them to portals. When you invite users, you set their sign-in method and select which portals they can access.

If you have a multi-project setup, you can invite users to multiple projects. Users choose which project to use after signing in.

  1. In the Translation Hub section of the Google Cloud console, go to the Users page.

    Go to the Users page

  2. Click Invite user.

  3. Select Portal user and then click Continue.

    Users can be added as portal users, translators, or both. For example, some users might initiate translations and also review other users' machine-translated content.

  4. Select Add manually to invite one user or Bulk import via a CSV file to invite multiple users in a single request, and then click Continue.

  5. Specify user details:

    • To manually add one user, specify the user's email address, sign-in method, and the portals they can access. The sign-in method specifies whether users sign in with an email and password or with their Google Account (such as a Google Workspace account).

    • To invite users in bulk, provide a CSV file where each line specifies a user's email address, sign-in method, and associated portals. You can specify an existing file in Cloud Storage or upload a local file to Cloud Storage. In either case, Translation Hub requires Cloud Storage permissions. For more information, see CSV file for inviting users in bulk.

    If you have existing portals, you can assign users to portals when you invite them. If not, you can assign users to portal when you create the portal. You can also assign users to one or more portals. If users are added to multiple portals, they choose which one to use after signing in.

  6. Click Done.

    Users with the GOOGLE sign-in method can access portals by going to https://translationhub.cloud.google.com/. Users with the EMAIL_PASSWORD sign-in method receive an email notification with a portal URL; they can also sign in by going to https://translationhub.cloud.google.com/.

    On the Users page, you can the view status of each user: Registered or Invited. Registered users have signed in at least once.

CSV file for inviting users in bulk

To add multiple users in a single request, specify user information in a CSV file. Each line of the CSV file uses the following format that contains the user's email address, sign-in method, and portal IDs:

EMAIL_ADDRESS,SIGN_IN_METHOD,PORTAL_ID_1;PORTAL_ID_2

The sign-in method can be google for Google Accounts or email/password for all other email addresses. The portal IDs are listed on the Portals page in the Google Cloud console. Use a semicolon to associate multiple portals to a single user.

The following example shows a sample CSV. Don't include a header row for column names.

amal@altostrat.com,email/password,123abc45def678f;234abc45def678g
charlie@altostrat.com,email/password,
hao@myownpersonaldomain.com,email/password,123abc45def678f

Translation Hub has a limit on the number of rows and CSV file size. For more information, see usage limits in Quotas and limits.

Add Cloud Storage permission to Translation Hub

Translation Hub reads your bulk-import CSV file from a Cloud Storage bucket. Translation Hub doesn't inherently have permissions to access Cloud Storage. To allow access, grant the Translation Hub service account the Storage Admin role, which allows Translation Hub to upload and read CSV files from your Cloud Storage buckets.

  1. Go to the IAM page.

    Go to the IAM page

  2. From the list of principals, check to see if the cloud-translation-hub@system.gserviceaccount.com service account already exists with the Storage Admin role. If not, proceed to the next step. If the service account already exist, skip these steps.

  3. Click Grant access.

  4. For the New principals field, add cloud-translation-hub@system.gserviceaccount.com as a principal.

  5. Click Select a role and then select the Storage Admin role.

    The role grants permissions for Translation Hub to add and read files in Cloud Storage buckets. To see the exact set of permissions, see the assigned permissions in the Google Cloud console.

  6. Click Save.

Translation resources

Translation resources let portal users modify the machine translations so that the results are tailored for a specific domain. You manage these resources and assign them to portals. After you assign resources to a portal, any portal user can use those resources.

The following list introduces the translation resources that you can manage and how they might help:

  • Glossary: A glossary is a custom dictionary to control how specific terms are translated. Due to glossary size limits, the glossary is meant to translate small segments like domain-specific terms or entities (such as names of people or organizations).

    Learn about glossaries.

  • Translation memory (advanced tier only): A translation memory controls how matching segments are translated at the sentence level.

    During the post-editing process, by default, a translation memory captures changes made by an editor as source and target language segment pairs. When you apply the same translation memory on future translations, Translation Hub applies the human-reviewed translations on exact matches. You can also set translation memories to read only.

    Learn about translation memories or read-only translation memories.

  • Custom model (advanced tier only): A custom model is a translation model that is tuned with your sentence pairs. Compared to the general Google NMT model, a custom model helps improve machine translations for a specific domain and writing style.

    Learn about custom models.

What's next