Translation Skill

Overview

A translation API for apps, support desks and content pipelines. Translator converts text between languages with neural machine translation and detects the source language when you leave it out. Set format to html to translate web content: tags, attributes and entities stay intact and only the text between them is translated. Each response names both languages in English, says whether the source was detected, and counts the characters translated.

Live Test Translation Skill Skill →

The tool

Once your client is connected to the VerveKit server, this appears in its tool list as TranslationSkill. It is read-only and open-world — it fetches and never mutates anything on your side — so most clients call it without asking you to confirm.

Tool call

{
  "name": "TranslationSkill",
  "arguments": {
    "text": "Hello, how are you today?",
    "target": "es"
  }
}

You do not name the tool yourself; the model picks it. Asking about Hello, how are you today? in the terms this skill covers is enough for it to reach for TranslationSkill on its own — naming it explicitly also works, and is the way to force the call.

Connecting

One server URL covers every skill in the catalog, including this one. Authorization is OAuth: the client opens a browser once, and there is no key to paste into a config file.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vervekit": {
      "url": "https://api.vervekit.com/v1/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Per-client setup — Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT — is on the MCP setup page.

Arguments

These are the properties on the tool's inputSchema, so a well-behaved client validates them before the call is made. Premium arguments are accepted on every plan but only take effect on plans that include them.

Argument	Type	Description
`text`Required	string	The text to translate length 0–50000
`target`Required	string	The language code to translate the text to (e.g., fr, es, de) length 0–10
`source`Optional	string	The language code of the text to translate (e.g., en). If left blank, language will be auto-detected
`format`Optional	string	text (default) or html. With html, markup and entities are kept and only the text between tags is translated default text

What the model gets back

The result carries a structuredContent object matching the tool's declared outputSchema, so a client reads fields without parsing prose. status is "ok" and error is null on success; a null field means the value was not available for that input, not that the call failed.

Result

{
  "status": "ok",
  "error": null,
  "data": {
    "sourceLang": "en",
    "targetLang": "es",
    "translatedText": "¡Estoy tan emocionada de que mañana vaya a hacer sol! ¡Qué ganas tengo!",
    "sourceLangName": "English",
    "targetLangName": "Spanish",
    "sourceDetected": false,
    "format": "text",
    "characterCount": 62
  }
}

Response fields

Paths are relative to data. Premium fields are absent rather than zeroed on plans that do not include them, so check for presence instead of comparing to 0.

Field	Type	Example	Description
`sourceLang`	string	`en`	The detected or specified source language code
`targetLang`	string	`es`	The target language code for translation output
`translatedText`	string	`¡Estoy tan emocionada de que mañana vaya a hacer sol! ¡Qué ganas tengo!`	The translated text in the target language
`sourceLangName`	string	`English`	English name of the source language (e.g. English); null for an unrecognised code
`targetLangName`	string	`Spanish`	English name of the target language (e.g. Spanish); null for an unrecognised code
`sourceDetected`	boolean	`false`	True when the source language was auto-detected rather than sent
`format`	string	`text`	Whether the text was translated as plain text or html
`characterCount`	number	`62`	Number of characters in the submitted text

Failure modes

Errors come back as tool errors carrying a sentence the model can act on, not a bare status code. Error handling covers the full list.

Status	What it means
`400` / `422`	The arguments did not validate. The message names the offending one.
`401`	The OAuth session is invalid or expired — reconnect the server.
`403`	Blocked by a key restriction or an IP allow-list. Never a bad identity.
`404`	This skill is not part of VerveKit. Check the catalog.
`429`	Out of credits, or a brief rate limit. The message tells them apart.

A call costs 40 credits each time the tool actually runs; a model that reasons about the tool without calling it costs nothing.

Use cases

Live Agent Chat Translation: When international customers message support in their native language, agents translate incoming tickets to draft localized replies without switching software.
Catalog Description Localization: Translate marketplace product titles and item descriptions into target consumer languages before launching digital storefronts in new overseas territories.
App Store Review Translation: Product teams convert foreign-language app store reviews into English using automatic language detection to monitor bug reports across regional markets.
Internal Employee Announcement Translation: To keep distributed staff updated, internal communicators render company-wide policy updates into multiple recipient languages for regional email distributions.

Other ways to use Translation Skill

Set up Translation Skill on VerveKit, or reach the same source a different way. Your VerveKit account and credits work on all of them — one key, one balance.

Call it as a REST APIOne HTTPS endpoint and an x-api-key header, with SDKs for Node, Python and .NET.APIVerve →Reference →

Google Sheets or ExcelA =VERVE() formula fills a column — no script, no export, recalculates in place.VerveSheets →Reference →