Terms of Service

1. Who we are and what these Terms cover

Penguin Translator is an AI-powered translation and grammar-correction service available at www.penguintranslator.com (the "Service"). It is operated in France by Wil as a sole proprietor (entrepreneur individuel), reachable at wil.8dev@gmail.com ("we", "us", "our"). These Terms of Service ("Terms") form a binding agreement between you and us. By creating an account, subscribing, or otherwise using the Service, you accept these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

2. The Service

We provide AI translation for short text and, on eligible paid plans, for supported text documents (TXT, CSV, JSON, MD, XML). Translations are produced by third-party large-language models accessed through the Vercel AI Gateway. Output quality can be strong for everyday work, but it is never guaranteed; you must review outputs before relying on them, especially for legal, medical, financial, or safety-critical use.

3. Account creation and acceptable use

• You must be at least 16 years old (or the higher minimum digital-consent age in your jurisdiction) to create an account.
• You are responsible for the accuracy of your account information and for keeping your password and session secure. Notify us promptly of any unauthorised use.
• You may not translate personal data (such as identification documents, medical records or HR files) about other people without their consent or another lawful basis.
• You may not use the Service for unlawful, infringing, defamatory, hateful, harassing, sexually exploitative or threatening content, nor to generate malware, phishing material, or instructions to facilitate violence or terrorism.
• You may not attempt to bypass quotas or rate-limits, scrape the service at scale, reverse-engineer our prompts, extract model parameters, or use automated agents in ways that exceed what we explicitly authorize.
• You may not share, transfer, resell or sublicense your account, API key or session.
• You may not interfere with the Service's security or availability, perform load tests without our written consent, or upload files containing malicious code.

4. Your content, our service, intellectual property

• Your content stays yours. You retain all rights, title and interest in the text and documents you submit. You grant us a limited, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, process, transmit and modify your content strictly to provide the Service to you (e.g. send it to the AI model and return a translation).
• Translations. We do not claim copyright over the translations the Service produces for you; you may use them freely for personal or commercial purposes, subject to applicable law and any third-party rights in the underlying source text.
• Our IP. The Penguin Translator name, logo, website, source code, design, prompts and documentation are owned by us or our licensors and protected by intellectual-property laws. We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and use the Service in accordance with these Terms; nothing else is granted.
• Feedback. If you send us suggestions, bug reports or feature requests, we may use them without restriction or compensation, but we will never publish them in a way that identifies you without your permission.

5. Availability and changes

We aim for high availability but do not commit to a contractual SLA on the Free plan. We may modify, suspend or discontinue features (in particular Beta or "soon" features) with reasonable notice when feasible. Scheduled maintenance windows will be announced in advance whenever possible. We reserve the right to throttle or temporarily block accounts that endanger the stability of the Service for other users.

6. Subscriptions, billing and refunds

Paid plans (Pro, Premium) are sold on a monthly or yearly basis through our payment provider Polar. Prices are shown on the Pricing page in USD and may include applicable VAT/GST collected by Polar. Subscriptions automatically renew at the end of each billing period until you cancel; you can cancel at any time from your account settings, which stops the next renewal but does not refund the current period. EU/EEA consumers have a 14-day right of withdrawal under Directive 2011/83/EU; by starting to use the paid features immediately you agree that you may lose this right once the digital service has been fully provided, in line with Art. L221-28 13° of the French Consumer Code. As a goodwill gesture beyond legal requirements, we offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on first-time subscriptions: email wil.8dev@gmail.com within 30 days of your first charge for a full refund. Quotas and rate-limits applicable to each plan are described on the Pricing page and may evolve; we will give reasonable notice before reducing them in a way that disadvantages existing subscribers.

7. Disclaimers

Except where prohibited by law, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available". We do not warrant that translations are accurate, complete, fit for a particular purpose, free of errors, or non-infringing. Outputs from AI models can hallucinate, omit nuance, or contain biased phrasing; you must independently review any output before using it for important decisions. Nothing in these Terms excludes mandatory consumer-protection rights you may have under your local law (including the French Code de la consommation).

8. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, our total cumulative liability arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us during the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred euros (EUR 100). We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, punitive or exemplary damages, including lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, business interruption or loss of goodwill, even if advised of the possibility. Nothing in this section limits liability for fraud, gross negligence, wilful misconduct, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any other liability that cannot be limited under applicable law (including, in France, articles 1231-3 and 1231-4 of the Civil Code where they apply).

9. Your indemnity

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold us harmless from any third-party claim, demand, loss, liability or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of (i) content you submit to the Service, (ii) your breach of these Terms or applicable law, or (iii) your infringement of any third-party right. We will notify you promptly of any such claim and reasonably cooperate in its defence.

10. Governing law and dispute resolution

These Terms are governed by French law. If you are a consumer ordinarily resident in the EU/EEA or the UK, you also benefit from any mandatory protections of the law of your country of residence; nothing in this clause deprives you of those protections. Before going to court, we encourage you to contact us at wil.8dev@gmail.com so we can try to resolve the dispute amicably. EU consumers may also use the European Commission's Online Dispute Resolution platform at ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr, or contact a consumer mediator. Failing an amicable resolution, disputes shall be brought before the competent French courts, without prejudice to any mandatory jurisdiction available to consumers.

11. Suspension, termination and changes to the Terms

You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access without prior notice if you materially breach these Terms, if continued service would expose us to legal risk, or if your account has been inactive for more than 24 months. We may update these Terms; for material changes we will provide at least 30 days' notice by email or in-app banner before the new version takes effect, and your continued use after that date means you accept the new Terms. If you do not accept the changes, you may cancel your subscription and stop using the Service before they take effect.

Résumé en français

• Le service est édité depuis la France par Wil, entrepreneur individuel ; ces conditions sont régies par le droit français, sous réserve des protections impératives de votre droit national si vous êtes consommateur dans l'UE/EEE ou au Royaume-Uni.
• Vous restez propriétaire de vos textes et de leurs traductions ; nous ne revendiquons aucun droit sur les sorties produites par l'IA pour vous.
• Les abonnements (Pro, Premium) sont gérés par Polar ; vous bénéficiez du droit de rétractation de 14 jours pour les consommateurs UE/EEE et d'une garantie commerciale "satisfait ou remboursé" de 30 jours pour la première souscription.
• Les traductions IA peuvent contenir des erreurs : vérifiez-les avant tout usage important (juridique, médical, financier).
• Notre responsabilité est limitée aux sommes versées sur les 12 derniers mois ou à 100 € (le plus élevé), dans les limites permises par la loi.
• Avant tout litige, contactez-nous à wil.8dev@gmail.com. Vous pouvez aussi recourir à un médiateur de la consommation ou à la plateforme RLL européenne.