To obtain Google’s Translate API Key, you must follow the following steps:

1.1.- The Google Cloud Console Account

It is necessary to have a Google Cloud Console account and a payment method to proceed.

• Access the Google Cloud’s platform console and log in. If you don’t have an account, you can register to open one.
• Open the left-hand side navigation menu on the console and select Billing.

• Click on the button “Create Account.” Keep in mind that if this is not your first billing account, you must first open the billing account list. For this, click on the “Manage Billing accounts” button.

An account with no Billing Account

An account with an existing Billing Account

• When creating your new Billing Account, enter the name for the billing account and follow the steps shown on the screen. These steps may vary between countries and billing methods.
• Click on Submit and Enable Billing.

1.2.- Create a project

Go to the upper ‘blue’ bar, and there you will find a drop-down menu with your projects, as well as the option to create a new project. Click on the “New Project” button.

Now, give your project a name, and click on the Create Button.

With this, you will have your project created and selected.

1.3.- Activate the Google Translate API

Before you can use the Google Translate API with your project, you need to activate it. Go to the left-hand side navigation menu and select API & Services.

Now, you will see the statistics of the APIs you have enabled. If you have just created the project from scratch, you will have zero data at the moment.

Click on the “+ Enable APIs and Services” link on the top, so we can enable the API we are looking for.

This will take us to a search where we need to search for the Google Translate API. Type down “Translate” on the search bar and select the “Cloud Translate API” from the results.

Now you will be taken to the “product” page for the Cloud Translation API. Here, you click on the “Enable” button to activate the API on our project.

1.4.- Create a new API Key for Google Translate

Now, we can go back to the navigation menu on the left-hand side and select “Credentials.”

Next, we click on the “+ Create Credentials” link at the top of the page.

We will now see the API Key we are going to use.

1.5.- How to Restrict our Google Translate API Key and Limit its Usage

To control the cost of Google Cloud while using the API for Cloud Translation, we can do two things. First, we can restrict from where you can use an API Key or limit the use we can have for the service itself.

If you click on the “Restrict Key” link on the previous screenshot, you will be taken to the API Key restriction page.