Translate a product catalog
A ten-thousand-item catalog cannot be translated one product at a time without someone quitting halfway through. The Catalog Translation endpoint accepts a full structured product feed and returns every title, description and attribute localized, as one job with one task_id, built for the scale e-commerce actually operates at.
Run it online
Run this on our servers with your account. Free tools run in your browser; this one bills your KIT balance per the price above.
The problem with translating a catalog by hand
A general translation tool expects a paragraph, not a spreadsheet with a title field, a description field, a size attribute and a materials list repeated across ten thousand rows. Doing that through a per-string interface means ten thousand requests, ten thousand chances to mismatch an item back to its source row, and a project that realistically never finishes on schedule. This endpoint was built for merchants, marketplaces and DTC brands who need an entire feed localized as a unit, not a sentence.
How the job is structured
You submit the catalog as structured items, each with its fields, and the target locale; the task runs asynchronously and hands back a task_id right away since a job of this size is never instant. When it completes, you get back the same structure with each item's translatable fields localized and every item still matched to its original identifier, so re-importing into your product database or PIM is a straightforward mapping, not a manual reconciliation.
Why catalog localization is its own discipline
Product catalogs carry constraints general prose does not: a size chart entry has to stay a size chart entry, a SKU-linked attribute has to stay machine-readable, and brand names generally should not be translated at all. Marketplaces that expanded into new countries learned this the hard way years ago, when literal translation of structured attributes broke filters and search facets on the storefront. This endpoint treats structure as a first-class constraint, not an afterthought bolted onto a text translator.
Fitting it into a catalog pipeline
Because the result arrives by signed webhook, a typical setup exports the day's new or changed SKUs, submits them as one job, and lets the webhook drop the localized feed straight into a staging table for review before it goes live in the target-market storefront. Large catalogs that update daily can run this as a scheduled job rather than a one-time migration, keeping every locale's catalog in sync with the source without a translator manually reworking each new listing.
What stays a human decision
Brand voice, legal disclaimers required in a specific market, and category taxonomy still deserve a person's judgment before a translated catalog goes live. What this endpoint removes is the mechanical bottleneck: turning ten thousand structured items into ten thousand localized ones without a translator retyping the same field name nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine more times.
What you can do with it
Marketplace expansion
A seller entering a new country submits its entire 8,000-SKU catalog as one job and receives every title and description localized, ready to import before the storefront launches.
Daily catalog sync
An online retailer runs a scheduled job each night that submits only newly added or edited products, keeping the translated storefront current without re-translating unchanged items.
Attribute and variant translation
A fashion brand localizes size, color and material attributes across its catalog while keeping SKU identifiers untouched for inventory matching.
Multi-market single feed
A brand selling in four countries submits the same source catalog four times, once per locale, and merges the four localized feeds into its multi-region PIM.
FAQ
How many products can I submit in one job?
The endpoint is built for large structured feeds, commonly in the thousands of items; very large catalogs can be split into multiple jobs submitted in parallel if preferred.
Is the catalog translation API free?
There's no free tier — free tiers get abused and slow everyone down. Access runs on a prepaid ForHosting KIT balance: top up from $10.00 (it never expires) and each request is charged at its published price, so a call with no balance returns HTTP 402. No subscription, no tokens, no invented credits, and a failed task is never charged.
Will my product identifiers or SKUs get changed?
No, identifiers pass through untouched; only the translatable fields you specify, like titles, descriptions and text attributes, are localized.
How long does a large catalog take?
It runs asynchronously and the duration scales with item count; you get a task_id immediately and the result arrives via webhook or signed link when the job finishes rather than through a blocking call.
Can I translate to multiple languages at once?
Each job targets one locale; for several target markets, submit the same catalog as separate jobs, one per locale, which can run in parallel.
What format does the catalog need to be in?
Submit structured items with their fields identified rather than a flat block of text, since the endpoint maps fields individually to preserve your product structure on the way back.
What happens if some items fail?
The system retries a failed item up to three times automatically; if it still cannot process, you get a clear error for that item and it is never charged.
Is my catalog data kept or used for training?
No. Your data is processed to deliver the result and deleted after the retention window; it is never used to train models.
For developers — API access
Everything on this page is available programmatically. This section is for teams who want to wire it into their own systems; everyone else can just use the tool above.
API endpoint
Prefer to automate it? One authenticated POST creates the task; the result comes back by webhook or a signed link. The same capability also runs here on the web, and soon from our app, email and Telegram.
Call it from your stack
curl -X POST https://api.kit.forhosting.com/translate/catalog \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $KIT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"items":["valor-1","valor-2"]}'const res = await fetch("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/translate/catalog", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.KIT_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify({
"items": [
"valor-1",
"valor-2"
]
})
});
const { task_id } = await res.json();import os, requests
res = requests.post(
"https://api.kit.forhosting.com/translate/catalog",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['KIT_KEY']}"},
json={
"items": [
"valor-1",
"valor-2"
]
},
)
task_id = res.json()["task_id"]<?php
$res = file_get_contents("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/translate/catalog", false, stream_context_create([
"http" => [
"method" => "POST",
"header" => "Authorization: Bearer " . getenv("KIT_KEY") . "\r\nContent-Type: application/json",
"content" => '{"items":["valor-1","valor-2"]}',
],
]));
$task = json_decode($res, true);body := bytes.NewBufferString(`{"items":["valor-1","valor-2"]}`)
req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.kit.forhosting.com/translate/catalog", body)
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("KIT_KEY"))
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)Example request
{
"items": [
"valor-1",
"valor-2"
]
}Example response
{
"task_id": "tsk_a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6",
"type": "translate.catalog",
"status": "queued",
"_links": {
"result": "/tasks/tsk_…/result"
}
}The API is asynchronous: the call returns a task_id immediately and the result arrives by webhook. Polling is capped at 1 req/s per task.
Pricing
Published price — no tokens, no invented credits. A failed task is never charged.
Limits
max_tokens | 20000 |
Errors
| HTTP | Code | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
401 | unauthorized | Missing or invalid API key. |
402 | insufficient_balance | Your balance doesn't cover the task price. |
404 | unknown_type | That task type doesn't exist. |
429 | rate_limited | Too many requests. Use the webhook instead of polling. |
422 | task_failed | The task failed after 3 retries. You are never charged for it. |