translate.dog

Your dog is nobody else's business.

This site collects nothing, sends nothing, and sets no cookies. That is not a promise asking for trust. It is an architecture you can verify from your own browser in about a minute.

Verify it yourself

A bark-translator app needs two things this site deliberately does not have: access to your microphone, and a server to invent a sentence.

  1. Check the network. Open developer tools, select the Network tab, and reload. Every request goes to www.translate.dog. No fonts CDN, no analytics beacon, no third-party script, no tracking pixel.
  2. Pull the plug. Switch the Network tab to Offline, or enable airplane mode, and use the interpreter. It keeps working, because the reasoning runs on your device.
  3. Try to open the microphone. In the console, run navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia({audio:true}). The browser rejects it by policy: we send Permissions-Policy: microphone=(), camera=(), geolocation=(), so permission is refused at the platform level before any script can ask.
  4. Read the engine. The entire interpretation model is human-readable at /assets/js/kb.js and /assets/js/engine.js. There is no minified bundle and no hidden model.

What we collect

Nothing. There is no account, no sign-up, no email capture, no contact form, no comment system, no cookies, and no analytics service. We do not know who you are, that you visited, or what you ticked.

On analytics, specifically. Even a cookieless, privacy-respecting analytics service would be a request to a third-party host, which would break the zero-external-request property that makes the check above meaningful. We chose the stronger guarantee. If visit counts are ever needed, they will come from the web server's own logs, which never involve your browser contacting anyone else.

What is stored, and where

If you choose to add a dog, the following is written to your own browser's local storage, on your own device:

  • The name you typed
  • Readings you explicitly saved: the signals and context you ticked, the resulting state and confidence band, and the date

This never leaves the device. It is not transmitted, backed up, or synchronised. Clearing your browser's site data removes it permanently, as does the delete button in the journal.

The server, and the host

The four checks above cover everything that happens in your browser. There is one thing they cannot cover, and it is true of every website in existence, so it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving it implied by the word “nothing”.

To send you this page at all, a web server has to receive a request from your device. That request carries your IP address, the address of the page you asked for, the time, and the identifying string your browser sends. Standard server logging records those. Under the GDPR an IP address counts as personal data, so this is the one place where the site processes any.

  • Who does it. The site is hosted by Hostinger, whose privacy policy states that all personal data are processed in accordance with the GDPR, and that where it handles information about the visitors to a customer's website it acts as the processor while the customer operating that site is the controller. Read on .
  • Why it is lawful. Legitimate interest in delivering the site you requested and keeping it available and secure. There is no consent banner because nothing here requires consent: no cookies, no analytics, no tracking.
  • How long. The logs are generated and retained by the host on its own schedule. The operator does not download them, analyse them, build profiles from them, or keep a copy.
  • Where. Hostinger is established in the European Union and operates data centres outside it as well. For any transfer outside the EEA its policy relies on the European Commission's approved standard contractual clauses.

That is the whole of it. No third party receives anything, because your browser never contacts one, which is the property the checks above let you confirm for yourself.

When you copy a link to a reading, the ticks you made are encoded into the part of the address after the #. Browsers do not transmit that fragment to the server, so even the act of opening a shared link does not tell us anything. The link contains only the observations themselves — never your dog's name, your journal, or anything identifying.

Outbound links

The safety pages link to professional directories such as veterinary and behaviour bodies. Those are ordinary links that you choose to click, opening in a new tab with rel="noopener noreferrer". Nothing is fetched from them while you are on this site, and we receive nothing back. Once you arrive at another organisation's website, their own privacy policy applies.

There are no advertisements anywhere on this site. Eight pages carry a partner link, each marked as one in the place where it appears: what a dog costs (Waggel), feeding and routine (PetLibro), car travel (Kurgo), reward-based training (Pawstruck), enrichment and play (Pooch Perks), grooming and handling (oneisall), older dogs (Waggel), and alone time and separation (Bully Beds). We earn a commission if you buy through one. Nothing else on this site is monetised.

Where partner links will never go, and this does not change: not on the safety pages, not on any body-language, vocalisation, behaviour or situation entry, not in the interpreter or its results, and never beside triage or veterinary-referral advice. The same commitment is written into the charter of things this site will never do, and that charter governs. The eight pages above are practical guides, which is why they are the only places this is allowed.

No partner paid to appear on any of them, no link influenced a figure in any table, and on every one of those pages the free and lower-cost routes are set out above the paid one rather than below it. Where we have not found a partner we would stand behind, the slot is left visibly empty with the standard it would have to meet, rather than filled with whoever pays. If the set of links ever changes, this section is updated the same day and re-dated at the foot of this page.

Your control

  • Use it without saving anything. Leave the selection on “Just this once” and nothing is written at all.
  • Export. The journal has an export button that writes a JSON file locally, generated in your browser.
  • Delete. Remove individual readings, or use delete-everything to wipe all dogs and journals from the device.

Nothing you do here is transmitted to us, so for everything on the list above the controls are complete, immediate, and in your hands rather than ours. There is no account to close and no request to send, because there is no copy at our end to act on.

Your rights, and how to complain

The controller for the one processing operation described above is the operator identified in the imprint. The GDPR gives you the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability. In practice there is very little for those rights to reach here: the site holds no account, no profile and no contact record, and the server logs are held by the host on its own schedule rather than in any system the operator queries.

If you want to exercise a right, or you think something on this page is not true, write to hello@plainforge.com. You do not have to go through us first: you have the right to complain directly to the Lithuanian supervisory authority, the State Data Protection Inspectorate (Valstybinė duomenų apsaugos inspekcija), at vdai.lrv.lt ↗, or to the supervisory authority in the EU country where you live.

Disclaimer

translate.dog is an educational tool for understanding canine communication. It offers evidence-informed interpretations of observed behaviour. It is not a translation of vocalisations into language, and no such translation is possible.

  • It does not provide veterinary, medical, or professional behavioural advice, and it is not a diagnosis.
  • It cannot see your dog and does not know their history, health, or baseline. Your own judgement, and that of a professional who can examine your dog, takes precedence over anything here.
  • For aggression, a bite or near-bite, escalating fear or guarding, or any sudden change in behaviour, consult a veterinarian first to rule out pain or illness, then a qualified force-free behaviour professional.
  • You remain responsible for the safety of the people and animals around you. Where there is any risk, prioritise separation and distance.

Terms of use

This site is provided as is, for general educational purposes, without warranties of any kind. To the fullest extent permitted by law, the publisher accepts no liability for loss, injury, or damage arising from use of, or reliance on, the information provided. Content is published for personal, non-commercial use; the underlying research remains the property of its authors and is cited so you can consult the originals.

Third-party materials referenced on this site, including proprietary assessment scales, remain the property of their owners and are linked rather than reproduced.

Who runs this site

The operator of translate.dog, with the correspondence address, VAT identification and direct contact details that European law requires, is identified in full on the imprint. That page is the single authoritative record, and it is linked from the foot of every page on this site so it is never more than one click away.

Those details are kept in one place on purpose. A legal identity repeated across a dozen pages goes stale in eleven of them, and a stale imprint is worse than an inconvenient one.

Corrections, particularly from behaviour and veterinary professionals, are genuinely welcome and are logged publicly. How corrections work.

Last updated . This revision replaces Napo with Waggel as the named insurer on the cost page and the older-dogs guide; the number of partner links is unchanged at eight. The previous revision documented server-side logging and the host's role, added the complaint right to the Lithuanian supervisory authority, and moved the operator record to a dedicated imprint.