Privacy Policy
Effective Date: July 16, 2026
smallLab28 ("we," "our," or "us") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how the PrivatePDF Translator desktop application (the "Software") handles your data when you use it on Windows, macOS, and Linux devices.
Our core philosophy is simple: Your documents belong to you. PrivatePDF Translator is designed to perform powerful PDF document translation while maintaining high layout fidelity (up to 99%). We aim to deliver seamless translation without compromising data security or imposing arbitrary server limits.
1. Document Processing & Data Transmission (Text-Only Cloud Translation)
Unlike traditional translation services that upload your entire PDF files to third-party servers, PrivatePDF Translator utilizes a hybrid privacy-first architecture:
- Local File Extraction: The actual PDF files, original layouts, scanned components, and images never leave your local device. The extraction of structures and document parsing are processed entirely offline on your machine.
- Text-Only Cloud Transmission: To perform the translation, the Software extracts only the raw text from your document and sends this text via secure API calls to our integrated translation service providers.
- Note on OCR: The Software does not include a built-in AI OCR engine. For scanned files or images, the document must already contain pre-existing OCR text layers in order to be processed and translated.
- Zero File Storage: No original PDF files or translated output documents are uploaded, stored, or cached on any external cloud servers.
- AI Integration Disclaimer: The AI technologies utilized by this Software are strictly limited to standard translation APIs (such as text translation models) to convert your text from one language to another. No AI model training or permanent data harvesting is conducted on your inputs.
2. Information We Collect
Because PrivatePDF Translator operates as a local-first desktop application, our data collection is strictly limited to what is necessary to maintain the software and manage user licenses:
- Account and License Information: If you purchase a license or subscribe to a plan, we collect necessary payment validation details and email addresses to authenticate your subscription and manage licenses.
- Diagnostic Data and Crash Reports (Optional): To help us resolve software bugs and optimize cross-platform performance (especially for Windows x64 and macOS ARM environments), the app may collect anonymous crash logs and basic usage telemetry. This data contains no personally identifiable information and absolutely no document content or translated text. You can opt-out of this diagnostic reporting at any time in the application settings.
3. Third-Party Services
PrivatePDF Translator utilizes powerful internal libraries (including custom C++ modules) to parse layouts locally. However, to deliver complete translation features, the Software connects to the following external services:
- Translation API Providers: When you execute a translation task, the raw text is sent to our trusted third-party translation engine partners. This text-only transmission is subject to the respective privacy policies of those service providers.
- Update Servers: The Software may periodically check our official GitHub repository or secure update servers to notify you of new software releases and security patches.
4. Data Security
We implement industry-standard administrative and technical security measures to protect the minimal personal information we retain (such as license keys and email addresses).
Because your physical PDF documents never leave your local machine, the security of your physical files is governed entirely by your local operating system and device security configurations.
5. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our features, translation engines, or operational practices. If we make significant changes, we will notify you through an in-app alert or an update on our official website.
6. Contact Us
If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or your data, please contact us at: