Method: detect

Detects the language of text within a request.

HTTP request

POST https://translation.googleapis.com/language/translate/v2/detect

The URL usesGoogle API HTTP annotation syntax.

Query parameters

Parameters
q

string

Required The input text upon which to perform language detection. Repeat this parameter to perform language detection on multiple text inputs.

key

string

A valid API key to handle requests for this API. If you are using OAuth 2.0 service account credentials (recommended), do not supply this parameter.

Response body

If successful, the response body contains data with the following structure:

JSON representation
{"data":{object(DetectLanguageResponseList)},}
Fields
data

object (ListValue)

The list of language detection responses. This list will contain a language detection response for each query (q) sent in the language detection request.

Authorization

Requires one of the following OAuth scopes:

  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-translation
  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform

For more information, see theAuth Guide.

DetectLanguageResponseList

A response list contains a list of separate language detection responses.

JSON representation
{"detections":[array],}
Fields
detections[]

array (ListValue format)

Language detection results for each input text piece.

The detections ListValue includes the following values:

  • language (string) - The detected language
  • isReliable (boolean) -Deprecated Indicates whether the language detection result is reliable
  • confidence (float) -Deprecated The confidence of the detection result for this language

We recommend not basing any decisions or thresholds on theisReliable orconfidence values.

For example:

"detections":[  [{    "language": "en",    "isReliable": false,    "confidence": 0.9882  }],  [{    "language": "pl",    "isReliable": false,    "confidence": 0.5683  }]]

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Last updated 2025-04-30 UTC.