Your words

What happens to what you send us.

Written plainly, and kept honest about what the site does today rather than what it will do later. If anything here is unclear, ask us and we will answer and fix the wording.

Working together on a draft. The owner of a draft can invite people to it by name. We store the name they were invited under, an email address if one was given for the invitation, and every change or note they make — with their name on it, because that is the point. An invitation can be withdrawn by the owner at any time, and asking us to remove a name is answered by a person.

Choosing between wordings. When a document was sent with the shared-library consent and a collaborator chooses between the machine’s takes on a sentence, we keep the choice: the alternatives that were on the table, the one chosen, and the name and standing of the person who chose. These choices train the model that drafts for everyone, and they never come from documents sent without that consent.

Two different things, and they are not the same

There are two places on this site where you can give us words, and what happens next is different. Both are described here.

Trying a line on the front page

  • Pressing Translate this line sends that one line to Sunbird AI in Kampala, with phone numbers and email addresses masked first, and shows you the draft in a couple of seconds. The panel tells you how many details were masked.
  • For a language we do not draft into, nothing is sent anywhere — asking for it records the language and your email address or phone number, so we can write to you when a speaker has approved an edition. That record is what decides the order languages are worked on.

Drafting a policy, at /translate

  • Your text is cut into sentences here, and each one is sent to Sunbird AI — a research group in Kampala whose models are built for Ugandan languages.
  • Phone numbers, email addresses and template fields are removed before anything leaves this server and put back afterwards, so your focal person's number is not sent to anyone. The page shows you how many were masked.
  • The text you sent, the sentences, the drafts and the file you uploaded are stored here. The private link we give you is the only way back to them.
  • The draft comes back marked not reviewed, and stays marked that way until a named speaker of the language has approved it. Nothing is published, printed or put in the library from a draft.
  • Your words join the shared library and glossary only if you tick the box asking us to, and only once a speaker has approved them.

Being straight about the limit of the masking: it catches things that have a shape — numbers and addresses. It does not reliably catch a person's name typed into a sentence, because the tools that would do that do not exist for most of these languages. So keep names in template fields rather than in prose, and treat the human review as the place where anything missed gets caught. We would rather tell you that than call it anonymous.

There are no accounts on this site, no advertising, and nothing that follows you between pages. The Children's Corner asks children for nothing at all — no name, no account, no contact details — and that will not change.

What not to send us

This site is for policies and materials

  • Please do not send us anything about a specific child — a name, a case, a report, or something a child told you.
  • If you are worried about a child right now, the helpline is 116, free from any phone, and they can speak with you in the language you know best.
  • We have no way to act on a report, and we will never ask you for one.

Keeping it, and getting rid of it

We keep a request while it is open, so that we can come back to you when the language you asked for is ready. Nothing is deleted on a timer yet — when documents can be uploaded, this page will say exactly how long they are kept, before that feature is switched on.

You can ask us to delete anything you have sent, at any time, and we will. Tell us here and we will confirm when it is done.

Where it lives

The site and its records run on a server in France, rented and administered by ASAT Labs, who host TotoSafe. Backups are kept on the same server. If your organisation needs its material to stay in a particular country, tell us before you send anything and we will say plainly whether we can do it — rather than find out afterwards.