Supported languages for translation

IBM is announcing the deprecation of the IBM Watson® Language Translator service for IBM Cloud® in all regions. As of 10 June 2023, the Language Translator tile will be removed from the IBM Cloud Platform for new customers; only existing customers will be able to access the product. As of 10 June 2024, the service will reach its End of Support date. As of 10 December 2024, the service will be withdrawn entirely and will no longer be available to any customers.

IBM Watson® Language Translator supports a wide array of translatable languages. It also supports customization of many translation models.

Listing supported languages for translation

You can use the List supported languages method to retrieve the list of supported languages for translation. The following example calls the method:

curl -X GET --user "apikey:{apikey}" \
"{url}/v3/languages?version=2018-05-01"

The method returns a complete list of all supported languages, sorted by language code (for example, af, ar). In addition to basic information about each language, the response indicates whether the language is supported_as_source for translation and supported_as_target for translation. It also lists whether the language is identifiable.

"languages": [
  {
    "language": "af",
    "language_name": "Afrikaans",
    "native_language_name": "Afrikaans",
    "country_code": "ZA",
    "words_separated": true,
    "direction": "left_to_right",
    "supported_as_source": false,
    "supported_as_target": false,
    "identifiable": true
  },
  {
    "language": "ar",
    "language_name": "Arabic",
    "native_language_name": "العربية",
    "country_code": "AR",
    "words_separated": true,
    "direction": "right_to_left",
    "supported_as_source": true,
    "supported_as_target": true,
    "identifiable": true
  },
  . . .
]

The list of support languages is long, reporting more than 75 languages.

List of supported languages

The following table list the translatable languages. The service can translate from the following languages to any other language in the list (with the exception of Basque and Catalan). The service correctly translates from and to bidirectional languages that are written left-to-right and right-to-left (for example, Arabic, Hebrew, and Urdu).

The service use ISO two-character codes for most languages. It uses an ISO three-character code (cnr) for Montenegrin. In some cases, it uses a two-character language code and a two-character country code separated by a hyphen, such as fr-CA for French Canadian, pa-PK for Punjabi spoken in Pakistan, and zh-TW for traditional (Mandarin) Chinese spoken in Taiwan.

Not all language combinations that are supported for translation are also customizable. Usually, only the combinations with English as source or target language are customizable. Click the name of a language to see the customizable translation models for that language.

Table 1. Translatable languages
Language	Language code	Language	Language code
Arabic	`ar`	Latvian	`lv`
Basque [1]	`eu`	Lithuanian	`lt`
Bengali	`bn`	Malay	`ms`
Bosnian	`bs`	Malayalam	`ml`
Bulgarian	`bg`	Maltese	`mt`
Catalan [1]	`ca`	Marathi	`mr`
Chinese (Simplified)	`zh`	Montenegrin [2]	`cnr`
Chinese (Traditional)	`zh-TW`	Nepali	`ne`
Croatian	`hr`	Norwegian Bokmål	`nb`
Czech	`cs`	Polish	`pl`
Danish	`da`	Portuguese	`pt`
Dutch	`nl`	Punjabi (Indian)	`pa`
English	`en`	Punjabi (Pakistani)	`pa-PK`
Estonian	`et`	Romanian	`ro`
Finnish	`fi`	Russian	`ru`
French	`fr`	Serbian [3]	`sr`
French (Canadian)	`fr`	Sinhala	`si`
German	`de`	Slovak	`sk`
Greek	`el`	Slovenian	`sl`
Gujarati	`gu`	Spanish	`es`
Hebrew	`he`	Swedish	`sv`
Hindi	`hi`	Tamil	`ta`
Hungarian	`hu`	Telugu	`te`
Irish	`ga`	Thai	`th`
Indonesian	`id`	Turkish	`tr`
Italian	`it`	Ukrainian	`uk`
Japanese	`ja`	Urdu	`ur`
Kannada	`kn`	Vietnamese	`vi`
Korean	`ko`	Welsh	`cy`

Notes:

Basque and Catalan are supported only for translation to and from Spanish.
The translation models for Montenegrin are not customizable at this time.
Serbian translation support is based on the Cyrillic alphabet. (Bosnian, Croatian, and Montenegrin translation support is based on the Latin alphabet.)

Listing supported translation models for customization

You can use the List models method to view the available translation models and any custom models that you created. You can filter results by language with the source and target parameters. The following example lists models that can translate from English to Spanish.

curl -X GET --user "apikey:{apikey}" \
"{url}/v3/models?source=en&target=es&version=2018-05-01"

The method returns information about the en-es translation model that you can use to translate from English to Spanish. The model is customizable.

"models": [
  {
    "model_id": "en-es",
    "source": "en",
    "target": "es",
    "base_model_id": "",
    "domain": "general",
    "customizable": true,
    "default_model": true,
    "owner": "",
    "status": "available",
    "name": "en-es"
  },
]

List of customizable translation models

The following sections list the customizable translation models for each language. As mentioned previously, not all language combinations that are supported for translation are also customizable. Typically, only language combinations with English as the source or target language are customizable.

Arabic

The following Arabic translation model can be customized.

Table 2. Arabic translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`ar-en`	Arabic (`ar`)	English (`en`)	general

Basque

The following Basque translation model can be customized.

Table 3. Basque translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`eu-es`	Basque (`eu`)	Spanish (`es`)	general

Bengali

The following Bengali translation model can be customized.

Table 4. Bengali translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`bn-en`	Bengali (`bn`)	English (`en`)	general

Bosnian

The following Bosnian translation model can be customized.

Table 5. Bosnian translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`bs-en`	Bosnian (`bs`)	English (`en`)	general

Bulgarian

The following Bulgarian translation model can be customized.

Table 6. Bulgarian translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`bg-en`	Bulgarian (`bg`)	English (`en`)	general

Catalan

The following Catalan translation model can be customized.

Table 7. Catalan translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`ca-es`	Catalan (`ca`)	Spanish (`es`)	general

Chinese (Simplified)

The following Chinese (Simplified) translation model can be customized.

Table 8. Simplified Chinese translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`zh-en`	Simplified Chinese (`zh`)	English (`en`)	general

Chinese (Traditional)

The following Chinese (Traditional) translation model can be customized.

Table 9. Traditional Chinese translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`zh-TW-en`	Simplified Chinese (`zh-TW`)	English (`en`)	general

Croatian

The following Croatian translation model can be customized.

Table 10. Croatian translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`hr-en`	Croatian (`hr`)	English (`en`)	general

Czech

The following Czech translation model can be customized.

Table 11. Czech translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`cs-en`	Czech (`cs`)	English (`en`)	general

Danish

The following Danish translation model can be customized.

Table 12. Danish translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`da-en`	Danish (`da`)	English (`en`)	general

Dutch

The following Dutch translation model can be customized.

Table 13. Dutch translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`nl-en`	Dutch (`nl`)	English (`en`)	general

English

The following English translation models can be customized.

The English-to-Montenegrin translation model (en-cnr) is not customizable at this time. It can be used for translation but cannot be customized.

Table 14. English translation models
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`en-ar`	English (`en`)	Arabic (`ar`)	general
`en-bg`	English (`en`)	Bulgarian (`bg`)	general
`en-bn`	English (`en`)	Bengali (`bn`)	general
`en-bs`	English (`en`)	Bosnian (`bs`)	general
`en-cnr`	English (`en`)	Montenegrin (`cnr`)	general
`en-cs`	English (`en`)	Czech (`cs`)	general
`en-cy`	English (`en`)	Welsh (`cy`)	general
`en-da`	English (`en`)	Danish (`da`)	general
`en-de`	English (`en`)	German (`de`)	general
`en-el`	English (`en`)	Greek (`el`)	general
`en-es`	English (`en`)	Spanish (`es`)	general
`en-et`	English (`en`)	Estonian (`et`)	general
`en-fi`	English (`en`)	Finnish (`fi`)	general
`en-fr`	English (`en`)	French (`fr`)	general
`en-fr-CA`	English (`en`)	Canadian French (`fr-CA`)	general
`en-ga`	English (`en`)	Irish (`ga`)	general
`en-gu`	English (`en`)	Gujarati (`gu`)	general
`en-he`	English (`en`)	Hebrew (`he`)	general
`en-hi`	English (`en`)	Hindi (`hi`)	general
`en-hr`	English (`en`)	Croatian (`hr`)	general
`en-hu`	English (`en`)	Hungarian (`hu`)	general
`en-id`	English (`en`)	Indonesian (`id`)	general
`en-it`	English (`en`)	Italian (`it`)	general
`en-ja`	English (`en`)	Japanese (`ja`)	general
`en-kn`	English (`en`)	Kannada (`kn`)	general
`en-ko`	English (`en`)	Korean (`ko`)	general
`en-lt`	English (`en`)	Lithuanian (`lt`)	general
`en-lv`	English (`en`)	Latvian (`lv`)	general
`en-ml`	English (`en`)	Malayalam (`ml`)	general
`en-mr`	English (`en`)	Marathi (`mr`)	general
`en-ms`	English (`en`)	Malay (`ms`)	general
`en-mt`	English (`en`)	Maltese (`mt`)	general
`en-ne`	English (`en`)	Nepali (`ne`)	general
`en-nb`	English (`en`)	Norwegian Bokmål (`nb`)	general
`en-nl`	English (`en`)	Dutch (`nl`)	general
`en-pa`	English (`en`)	Indian Punjabi (`pa`)	general
`en-pa-PK`	English (`en`)	Pakistani Punjabi (`pa-PK`)	general
`en-pl`	English (`en`)	Polish (`pl`)	general
`en-pt`	English (`en`)	Portuguese (`pt`)	general
`en-ro`	English (`en`)	Romanian (`ro`)	general
`en-ru`	English (`en`)	Russian (`ru`)	general
`en-si`	English (`en`)	Sinhala (`si`)	general
`en-sk`	English (`en`)	Slovak (`sk`)	general
`en-sl`	English (`en`)	Slovenian (`sl`)	general
`en-sr`	English (`en`)	Serbian (`sr`)	general
`en-sv`	English (`en`)	Swedish (`sv`)	general
`en-ta`	English (`en`)	Tamil (`ta`)	general
`en-te`	English (`en`)	Telugu (`te`)	general
`en-th`	English (`en`)	Thai (`th`)	general
`en-tr`	English (`en`)	Turkish (`tr`)	general
`en-uk`	English (`en`)	Ukrainian (`uk`)	general
`en-ur`	English (`en`)	Urdu (`ur`)	general
`en-vi`	English (`en`)	Vietnamese (`vi`)	general
`en-zh`	English (`en`)	Simplified Chinese (`zh`)	general
`en-zh-TW`	English (`en`)	Traditional Chinese (`zh-TW`)	general

Estonian

The following Estonian translation model can be customized.

Table 15. Estonian translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`et-en`	Estonian (`et`)	English (`en`)	general

Finnish

The following Finnish translation model can be customized.

Table 16. Finnish translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`fi-en`	Finnish (`fi`)	English (`en`)	general

French

The following French translation model can be customized.

Table 17. French translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`fr-en`	French (`fr`)	English (`en`)	general

French (Canadian)

The following French (Canadian) translation model can be customized.

Table 18. Canadian French translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`fr-CA-en`	Canadian French (`fr-CA`)	English (`en`)	general

German

The following German translation models can be customized.

Table 19. German translation models
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`de-en`	German (`de`)	English (`en`)	general
`de-fr`	German (`de`)	French (`fr`)	general
`de-it`	German (`de`)	Italian (`it`)	general

Greek

The following Greek translation model can be customized.

Table 20. Greek translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`el-en`	Greek (`el`)	English (`en`)	general

Gujarati

The following Gujarati translation model can be customized.

Table 21. Gujarati translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`gu-en`	Gujarati (`gu`)	English (`en`)	general

Hebrew

The following Hebrew translation model can be customized.

Table 22. Hebrew translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`he-en`	Hebrew (`he`)	English (`en`)	general

Hindi

The following Hindi translation model can be customized.

Table 23. Hindi translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`hi-en`	Hindi (`hi`)	English (`en`)	general

Hungarian

The following Hungarian translation model can be customized.

Table 24. Hungarian translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`hu-en`	Hungarian (`hu`)	English (`en`)	general

Indonesian

The following Indonesian translation model can be customized.

Table 25. Indonesian translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`id-en`	Indonesian (`id`)	English (`en`)	general

Irish

The following Irish translation model can be customized.

Table 26. Irish translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`ga-en`	Irish (`ga`)	English (`en`)	general

Italian

The following Italian translation models can be customized.

Table 27. Italian translation models
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`it-de`	Italian (`it`)	German (`de`)	general
`it-en`	Italian (`it`)	English (`en`)	general

Japanese

The following Japanese translation model can be customized.

Table 28. Japanese translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`ja-en`	Japanese (`ja`)	English (`en`)	general

Kannada

The following Kannada translation model can be customized.

Table 29. Kannada translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`kn-en`	Kannada (`kn`)	English (`en`)	general

Korean

The following Korean translation model can be customized.

Table 30. Korean translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`ko-en`	Korean (`ko`)	English (`en`)	general

Latvian

The following Latvian translation model can be customized.

Table 31. Latvian translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`lv-en`	Latvian (`lv`)	English (`en`)	general

Lithuanian

The following Lithuanian translation model can be customized.

Table 32. Lithuanian translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`lt-en`	Lithuanian (`lt`)	English (`en`)	general

Malay

The following Malay translation model can be customized.

Table 33. Malay translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`ms-en`	Malay (`ms`)	English (`en`)	general

Malayalam

The following Malayalam translation model can be customized.

Table 34. Malayalam translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`ml-en`	Malayalam (`ml`)	English (`en`)	general

Maltese

The following Maltese translation model can be customized.

Table 35. Maltese translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`mt-en`	Maltese (`mt`)	English (`en`)	general

Marathi

The following Marathi translation model can be customized.

Table 36. Marathi translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`mr-en`	Marathi (`mr`)	English (`en`)	general

Montenegrin

The following Montenegrin translation model cannot be customized.

Table 37. Montenegrin translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`cnr-en`	Montenegrin (`cnr`)	English (`en`)	general

The Montenegrin-to-English translation model (cnr-en) is not customizable at this time. It can be used for translation but cannot be customized.

Nepali

The following Nepali translation model can be customized.

Table 38. Nepali translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`ne-en`	Nepali (`ne`)	English (`en`)	general

Norwegian Bokmål

The following Norwegian Bokmål translation model can be customized.

Table 39. Norwegian Bokmål translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`nb-en`	Norwegian Bokmål (`nb`)	English (`en`)	general

Polish

The following Polish translation model can be customized.

Table 40. Polish translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`pl-en`	Polish (`pl`)	English (`en`)	general

Portuguese

The following Portuguese translation model can be customized.

Table 41. Portuguese translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`pt-en`	Portuguese (`pt`)	English (`en`)	general

Punjabi (Indian)

The following Indian Punjabi translation model can be customized.

Table 42. Indian Punjabi translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`pa-en`	Indian Punjabi (`pa`)	English (`en`)	general

Punjabi (Pakistani)

The following Pakistani Punjabi (Shahmukhi script) translation model can be customized.

Table 43. Pakistani Punjabi translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`pa-PK-en`	Pakistani Punjabi (`pa-PK`)	English (`en`)	general

Romanian

The following Romanian translation model can be customized.

Table 44. Romanian translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`ro-en`	Romanian (`ro`)	English (`en`)	general

Russian

The following Russian translation model can be customized.

Table 45. Russian translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`ru-en`	Russian (`ru`)	English (`en`)	general

Serbian

The following Serbian translation model can be customized. The service supports translation for Serbian based on the Cyrillic alphabet, not the Latin alphabet.

Table 46. Serbian translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`sr-en`	Serbian (`sr`)	English (`en`)	general

Sinhala

The following Sinhala translation model can be customized.

Table 47. Sinhala translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`si-en`	Sinhala (`si`)	English (`en`)	general

Slovak

The following Slovak translation model can be customized.

Table 48. Slovak translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`sk-en`	Slovak (`sk`)	English (`en`)	general

Slovenian

The following Slovenian translation model can be customized.

Table 49. Slovenian translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`sl-en`	Slovenian (`sl`)	English (`en`)	general

Spanish

The following Spanish translation models can be customized.

Table 50. Spanish translation models
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`es-ca`	Spanish (`es`)	Catalan (`ca`)	general
`es-en`	Spanish (`es`)	English (`en`)	general
`es-fr`	Spanish (`es`)	French (`fr`)	general
`es-eu`	Spanish (`es`)	Basque (`eu`)	general

Swedish

The following Swedish translation model can be customized.

Table 51. Swedish translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`sv-en`	Swedish (`sv`)	English (`en`)	general

Tamil

The following Tamil translation model can be customized.

Table 52. Tamil translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`ta-en`	Tamil (`ta`)	English (`en`)	general

Telugu

The following Telugu translation model can be customized.

Table 53. Telugu translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`te-en`	Telugu (`te`)	English (`en`)	general

Thai

The following Thai translation model can be customized.

Table 54. Thai translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`th-en`	Thai (`th`)	English (`en`)	general

Turkish

The following Turkish translation model can be customized.

Table 55. Turkish translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`tr-en`	Turkish (`tr`)	English (`en`)	general

Ukrainian

The following Ukrainian translation model can be customized.

Table 56. Ukrainian translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`uk-en`	Ukrainian (`uk`)	English (`en`)	general

Urdu

The following Urdu translation model can be customized.

Table 57. Urdu translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`ur-en`	Urdu (`ur`)	English (`en`)	general

Vietnamese

The following Vietnamese translation model can be customized.

Table 58. Vietnamese translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`vi-en`	Vietnamese (`vi`)	English (`en`)	general

Welsh

The following Welsh translation model can be customized.

Table 59. Welsh translation model
Model ID	Source	Target	Domain
`cy-en`	Welsh (`cy`)	English (`en`)	general