Launching What-Lang Language Detection API

Today, we are launching What-Lang API, a language detection API that focuses on accuracy.

There are times where you need to know the language of a piece of text, and What-Lang is here to help. A few years ago when we were building X-late, our translation app on Slack, we needed to detect the language before translating to provide the best user experience and to save cost on the translation. Then we realized that it wasn’t easy to set it up. After a bunch of trial and error, we integrated Lingua into our codebase. While it was working very well, we found that it was so resource-intensive that we had to move it to a separate service. We eventually built a rock solid language detection service internally, and learned a lot from that experience. So we decided to build What-Lang to help others who are facing the same problem.

In the age of AI, there is an increasing need for detecting language before setting up your prompts for your LLM. You can provide more accurate prompt based on your customer’s language. What-Lang is here to help you with that.

We have just put in the work and exposed the API endpoint to the public, so you can start using it right away. Before we finish setting up payment system, please feel free to test it out and let us know if you run into issues integrating.