How We Built an AI Translation API with Google Gemini

Why AI Translation?

Traditional translation APIs (Google Translate, DeepL) work well for general text, but they struggle with:

• Arabic dialects — Gulf Arabic vs Egyptian vs Levantine
• Formality levels — Formal business Arabic vs casual chat
• Context-aware translation — Technical terms, cultural nuances

We decided to use Google Gemini 2.5 Flash as our translation engine. It's fast (< 500ms), understands context, and supports dialect control.

Architecture

Client → /api/v1/translate → Cache Check (Valkey)
                                  ↓ miss
                             Gemini 2.5 Flash
                                  ↓
                             Cache Store (24h TTL)
                                  ↓
                             Response

The Prompt

The key to good AI translation is the prompt. Here's our approach:

Translate the following text from {source} to {target}.
Formality: {formality}
Dialect: {dialect}
Rules:
Maintain the original meaning and tone
Use the specified dialect if provided
Return ONLY the translated text, no explanations

Caching Strategy

Translation is expensive (API credits + latency). We cache aggressively:

• Cache key: Hash of text + source + target + formality + dialect
• TTL: 24 hours in Valkey
• Fallback: In-memory Map if Valkey is unavailable

This gives us 0ms latency on cache hits and reduces our Gemini API costs by ~80%.

SDK Usage

TypeScript

import { KhaleejiAPI } from '@khaleejiapi/sdk';
const client = new KhaleejiAPI({ apiKey: 'YOUR_KEY' });
const result = await client.communication.translateAI({
  text: 'Hello, how are you?',
  target: 'ar',
  formality: 'formal',
  dialect: 'gulf'
});
console.log(result.translated);
// "السلام عليكم، كيف حالكم؟"

Python

from khaleejiapi import KhaleejiAPI
client = KhaleejiAPI(api_key="YOUR_KEY")
result = client.translate(
    text="Hello, how are you?",
    target="ar",
    formality="formal",
    dialect="gulf"
)
print(result["translated"])
# "السلام عليكم، كيف حالكم؟"

Supported Languages

We support 22+ languages, including all major MENA languages:

Performance

Try It

curl -X POST https://khaleejiapi.dev/api/v1/translate \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"text": "Good morning", "target": "ar", "dialect": "gulf"}'

Get your free API key at khaleejiapi.dev/signup.