Why POM Translate uses the POM AI service
POM Translate and POM AI have separate responsibilities.
POM Translate owns the multilingual workflow inside WordPress: it extracts source strings, applies exclusions, builds contextual batches, validates protected markers, stores translations, and serves them without duplicating the original post. POM AI is the remote language service that produces automatic translations.
What requires POM AI
These actions use POM AI:
- Translate with POM AI on an empty translation field;
- browser-driven translation from Generate pending translations;
- scheduled translation of strings added to the background queue;
- batch translation of loaded software strings.
Ordinary frontend rendering does not. Neither do manual translation, editing a stored value, changing its workflow status, or falling back to source text.
The licenses are not interchangeable
The POM Translate license authorizes POM Translate and its private updates. It does not grant AI credits.
Automatic translation uses a separate POM AI license stored for the current site. That license must:
- be active;
- authorize the current site host;
- have enough account credits and, where configured, enough allowance for this domain.
The supported setup keeps the POM AI plugin active so its License and AI Setup screens can manage that credential, balance, and business context. POM Translate's runtime checks the stored POM AI service key rather than using the POM Translate key.
Why local limits still matter
POM Translate groups compatible source strings into bounded POM AI requests. The number of stored rows therefore does not directly describe the number of service operations or the account balance needed.
Daily word and string limits protect this WordPress site from sending more work than intended; they do not add credits or change the POM AI account balance. Check current credit rules and the authoritative balance in POM AI before a large run.
Continue with Requirements for automatic translation.