Using translate.googleapis.com vs translation.googleapis.com

Question

I want a proper explanation on what each of translation.googleapis.com and translate.googleapis.com are, and how they differ.

Documentation uses one or the other without any specifics:

• translate: https://cloud.google.com/translate/docs/reference/rest
• translation: https://cloud.google.com/translate/docs/reference/rest/v2/translate

It seems like translation.googleapis.com does not exist in the list of APIs that one can enable (i.e. gcloud services list --available only shows translate.g.., not translation*).

What are these two API endpoints for?

Answer 1

The terms "translation.googleapis.com" and "translate.googleapis.com" are referring to two different things. These two domain names are both translate interfaces provided by Google, but they are different versions.

1. translation.googleapis.com is a basic version of the translate interface provided by Google [1].
2. translate.googleapis.com is an upgraded version of the translate interface provided by Google [2].

You can review differences between them in Google Cloud Docs: Compare Basic And Advanced (though they don't explain the difference in endpoint there).