Not every browser has a translator. Edge has one, which Bindery labels as your browser’s and does not call on-device until it has checked that Edge never hands the text to a cloud service; Firefox, Safari and Chrome on a phone have none. There, the way to translate is your own AI key, and that route does send text: the full text of the pages you translate goes to the provider you chose, such as OpenAI or Mistral, after you tick consent for that job, and never to Bindery. An Ollama server on your own computer keeps it on the computer. Bindery sends only to api.openai.com, api.groq.com, openrouter.ai, api.mistral.ai and a local Ollama, and refuses any other address before a request is made. The result is a machine draft for you to check: Bindery does not certify, notarize or swear translations.
How it works
- Open this page in Chrome on a computer and drop the PDF
- Check which engine the screen names — Chrome on this device, or the provider your key sends text to — then press Translate
- Check each page side by side and download the .docx; the file never left the tab
Questions people ask
How can I check that nothing is uploaded?
Open the browser’s developer tools, choose the Network panel and run a translation with Chrome’s translator: you will see the app’s own files and no request carrying the document or its text. Chrome downloads a language pack itself the first time a pair is used; that download is the browser’s, not Bindery’s, and carries nothing from your file. The verify page walks through the same check for every tool.
What does my own AI key send, exactly?
The text of every page you translate, including text read from scanned pages, in batches to the provider at the base URL you set — after a consent box that names the provider, the host and the number of pages and characters. Your key is stored in this browser and goes only to that provider. The PDF file, its images and your Bindery account are never sent. The settings are shared with Ask this PDF.
Does it work offline?
Not fully, unlike the rest of Bindery. Chrome needs the network once per language pair to download its language pack; after that, translating that pair works offline. Your own key needs the network every time. An Ollama server on your own computer works without the internet.