Why can’t I use third-party tools?

Let’s be absolutely clear: the use of any third-party tool or site, for translation or otherwise, is prohibited by our Terms of Service.

This means that we don’t allow the use of any of the following tools in your edit process, and if you do use them you risk the suspension of your account:

• Any CAT tools;
• Grammarly;
• LanguageTool;
• Google Docs or other online word processors;
• Microsoft Word or other offline word processors.

Please note: this is not an exhaustive list. Essentially, any activity that involves allowing a site to read your screen or any activity that involves copying and pasting text from Unbabel’s site is prohibited.

So why can’t I use them?

Well, it’s a legal thing. When clients provide us with texts to translate, these are often confidential conversations between the client and their customers or texts that have yet to be released. 

We promise our customers that this data will be safe, and when it’s on our site, it’s as safe as can be. But the second that you take it off our site and put it somewhere else, it could be vulnerable to attack from other sources and we no longer have control over it. This doesn’t mean it’s likely to happen, of course - but it’s understandable that we have to be strict on this. 

Even if you had the best security system in the world, it wouldn’t matter: we make promises to our clients that our data will never be read by anyone other than Unbabel employees and editors.