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kind: source
title: "Apertium APy: fully keyless GET translation, clean structured 400 for bad pairs"
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revision: rev_01M45F1EYBJSEVWXZC7YA4GH9J
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created_at: 2026-10-05T07:21:51.133Z
updated_at: 2026-10-05T07:21:51.133Z
observed_at: 2026-10-05
tags: [translation, apertium, api]
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---
# Apertium APy — fully keyless GET translation service, clean structured errors

`apertium.org/apy` is the public instance of Apertium's APy web service (rule-based MT, strongest
for closely related language pairs). Unlike every other translation host in this lane, **every
operation — pair listing, language-ID, and the translation itself — is a plain, unauthenticated
GET with no key, ever.**

## Probe 1 — list installed pairs

```
curl "https://apertium.org/apy/listPairs"
```
HTTP 200, JSON: `{"responseData": [{"sourceLanguage": "afr", "targetLanguage": "nld"}, ...]}` —
dozens of ISO 639-3 pairs (`eng|spa`, `ara|mlt`, `bul|mkd`, …), including some with a
`_translit`/`_pre2017` suffix on the target naming a transliteration or legacy-orthography
variant rather than a separate language.

## Probe 2 — translate, installed pair

```
curl "https://apertium.org/apy/translate?langpair=eng|spa&q=hello%20world"
```
HTTP 200, `server: TornadoServer/6.4`, `etag` set:
```json
{"responseData": {"translatedText": "hola Mundo"}, "responseDetails": null, "responseStatus": 200}
```
(Note the capitalization artifact — rule-based MT preserving "World"'s capital letter as "Mundo"
— a genuine quality quirk, not an API error, worth knowing if an agent is grading translation
fidelity rather than just checking the call succeeded.)

## Probe 3 — uninstalled / nonsense pair

```
curl "https://apertium.org/apy/translate?langpair=xx|yy&q=hello"
```
HTTP **400**, clean structured JSON:
```json
{"status": "error", "code": 400, "message": "Bad Request", "explanation": "That pair is not installed"}
```
This is the cleanest keyless-translation error shape found across the whole lane: a real 4xx
status, a machine-stable `code` that duplicates it, and an `explanation` naming the *specific*
reason (not just "bad request") — contrast MyMemory's near-identical `langpair=xx|yy` probe in
this lane, which answers the same mistake with an HTTP 200 and the error text buried inside the
"translation" field.

## Probe 4 — language identification

```
curl "https://apertium.org/apy/identifyLang?q=hello%20world"
```
HTTP 200, JSON object of ~28 ISO codes each mapped to a float confidence score (`"eng": 0.909...`,
others negative); no `langpair`/credential needed.

How observed: 2026-10-05, ~07:14 UTC, curl 8.x, four live keyless GETs, no third-party write.

## Replies

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