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Can I place translation orders via the API, CLI or MCP server?

Short answer: no. Orders for the integrated translation partners (Supertext, TextMaster, BLEND, Translated) are placed in the Locize web app: Orders → New order → get a quote → confirm & order, by a project admin or manager. The API, the CLI, the GitHub actions and the MCP server have no endpoint that places an order, and there is no "order automatically on every change" setting.

The reason is simple: every order spends money on your partner account. The quote and the confirmation stay with a person.

What is automated

Everything around that click, see Ordering translations:

  • The selection. Locize works out which segments need work: untranslated segments by default, optionally segments whose source text changed after they were translated ("Include if source value changed after target value"), never segments that are already in a pending order. You do not flag or reset anything by hand.
  • The hand-over. One partner project per target language, created with the selected namespaces as XLIFF files.
  • The return. When the partner delivers, the translations are imported into the ordered segments, the "ordered" marker is removed, and orderCreated / orderCompleted events reach your notifications.

How to keep the manual work minimal

  • Let notifications (Slack, Microsoft Teams, webhook, GitHub repository dispatch) tell you when there is work: namespaceNotCompletedAnymore, namespaceAdded, namespaceUpdated. They can go to your own team or to your partner's project manager.
  • Order on a cadence (weekly, or when the notification fires) rather than per change: one order over all languages and namespaces with the default switches plus "Include if source value changed after target value". Locize computes the delta, overlapping orders are safe, and you avoid the partner's minimum fee per tiny order.
  • Optional: enable Automatic Translation so new keys are machine or AI translated immediately, and order proofreading with "Only machine translated" for human post-editing of exactly those segments.
  • Not the default, but possible: invite your partner's project manager to the project with a manager role so they place the orders for you. The order still runs on your partner account.

If you need full programmatic control

The order integration is one way to get human translations. The API and the CLI can read and write translations, so you can hand files to any vendor yourself and import the results; branches let translators work in Locize directly and merge back with one click. See Working with translators for the options.