Is SDL Language Cloud included in SDL Web 8 or Web 8.5?

Question

I'm curious if SDL Web 8 includes SDL Language Cloud as well.

Answer 1

I recently set this up, and all blog posts, etc. that I read at the time said it was free.

However, I had a problem getting the API keys after signing up. Here is my email exchange with the Language Cloud Support team and (temporary) solution:

Sent by me:

Hello.

I created an API Key for my SDL Web integration (in Sandbox mode). However, when I signed up for the free MT trial plan, all mention of the API keys and the Sandbox option has gone missing from the interface and my integration has stopped working.

Can you help please?

And I received the following response from the Support team:

Hello ,

Thank you for contacting SDL Language Cloud Machine Translation Support.

Language Cloud offers the possibility to create API Keys after selecting one of the Machine Translation Subscriptions (ex. Translation in Microsoft Office - you can try it 30 days for free, and Professional Translation). I have activated for you, Translation in Microsoft Office trial 30 day, and now you can set up the API Keys that you want, and those will be available 30 days, after that you need to buy a subscription for continuous use of the subscription.

Please let me know if there is anything further I can help with this case or if I can go ahead and close it.

Kind regards. SDL Support

So, unfortunately, it appears that you now need a subscription (following the trial period) to use SDL Language Cloud and SDL Web (or SDL Tridion) together, or you can use the sandbox option, but will not benefit from the tailored translation memory and you may need to continually change the API key within the Translation Manager interface (within the CME).

From memory, the cheapest suitable subscription is $10pcm, so not ridiculously expensive, but will end up being yet another cloud (type) subscription for me (on top of AWS, Spotify, G-Cloud, etc.) if I subscribe.

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P.S. I must say that the person from the Support team responded very quickly and was really helpful throughout the whole query process.

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Additional information:

1. You'll need to install the Translation Manager module (selected as an option within the Content Manager installer) to get the screens for configuring the integration and the menu options for editors to send items for translation within the Content Management Explorer (CME) interface.

2. There are two parts to SDL Language Cloud: Machine translations and Managed (I.e. Human) translations. My issue above was with the Machine translation part and I've assumed your question is about the same. Machine translations are billed as a (monthly) subscription. Managed translations are billed by the translation job, so these should be factored into your costs.