Google API usage trouble – 10x higher fees

  • Hi,

    I am running translatepress on larger site. I am using API from Google to automatically translate text. But my numbers in char. request on API are different from strings translated in database.

    If I download DB with translation column on my disk, it has around 2.2MB in CSV. Cut in half cos half is original language, it is 1.1MB = 1.1 Million translated characters. API is running 2 months and cost me around 200 USD. 200 USD should be 10 million characters translated (they charge me for around 5 million characters each month, so this is correct).

    So I was expecting to pay around 20 USD for translating website, and I am paying 10x higher rate. Can someone explain this to me?

    Is somewhere a log where plugin stores what is it sending on translation? I cant pay 100 USD every month for 5 Million translated characters, when in reality it stores just half million characters…

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Author Cristian Antohe

    (@sareiodata)

    Hello,

    We have documentation steps on how to set up the Google Translate API key and how to add quotas to never exceed a certain threshold:
    https://translatepress.com/docs/settings/generate-google-api-key/

    Once Google Translate API key is set into the plugin, it will translate each string on the pages accessed either by admin or visitors, without requiring any help from you.

    It will only translate content in one particular language on one particular page the first time someone views that page in that language.
    This means that there is no complete scanning and translating of the entire site. It’s only done incrementally as the pages are accessed.
    (However, Google Search indexing can cause a large portion of the website to be accessed. That’s why it’s recommended to set a quota)

    The translations are stored in your site’s local database so that the next time a visitor accesses the same page, it doesn’t need to query the Google API again for the same strings.
    This saves execution time and most importantly saves costs.

    When browsing a page normally, the content is translated only in the language that is being displayed.
    When browsing in Translation Editor, it’s like browsing all the languages at the same time. Translations will be retrieved for all languages for the content being viewed in the Translation Editor.

    As to why the price was 10x, I’m really not sure.
    Did you also took into account the gettext tables?

    Thread Starter korwinus

    (@korwinus)

    Hi. Yeah I know it stores data in DB. But some string are there twice or more than that. Dont know why.

    I set limits: V2 and v3 Characters per day 50,000
    V2 and v3 Characters per 100 seconds 10,000
    V2 and v3 Characters per 100 seconds per user 10,000

    And now its seems ok. It translates now around 3k chars per day. So really low. Before it was like 100k to 500k chars.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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