Hello World: Why We Built a Privacy-First Document Translation Service

We built noll because we kept asking the same question: why does translating a confidential document mean handing it over to someone else's data pipeline?

The answer, it turns out, is that most translation services aren't designed for privacy. They're designed for convenience, for scale, for training better AI models. Your documents are just fuel.

We think that's backwards. So we built something different.

The problem we kept seeing

Every week, someone uploads a sensitive document to a free translation tool without thinking twice. An NDA. A medical record. An employment contract with salary details.

And somewhere in a 40-page terms of service, there's a clause that says: "We may use your content to improve our services."

That's corporate speak for: "We're training our AI on your data."

We saw this pattern across industries:

• Law firms running client documents through consumer translation apps
• HR teams translating employee contracts with tools that retain indefinitely
• Healthcare providers uploading patient information to services with unclear data handling

The tools were fast and free. The privacy implications were invisible until they weren't.

Why we built noll

We wanted a translation service we could actually recommend to clients handling sensitive documents.

Not "trust us, we're careful." Not "check the box to opt out." Just: we don't want your data.

Your documents are translated and deleted. Automatically. Every time. There's no setting to enable, no premium tier to unlock. It's how the system works.

Our core principles

1. Privacy by design

Your documents are deleted automatically 30 minutes after translation. We don't keep copies "just in case." We don't archive for troubleshooting. The files are gone.

This isn't just policy—it's architecture. There's no admin panel with a "view uploads" button because the uploads don't exist after you're done.

2. No training on your data

We use Azure's Document Translation API, which is a pre-trained model. Your documents are not used to improve or fine-tune any AI system. We have no machine learning pipeline that touches customer content.

3. Transparent processing

You always know exactly what happens to your files:

• Encrypted in transit (TLS 1.3) and at rest (AES-256)
• Processed in EU data centers only
• Time-limited download links that expire after 30 minutes
• No logs containing document content

For the full technical breakdown, see How your data is handled.

How it works

When you upload a document to noll:

1. Upload: Your file travels over HTTPS to encrypted cloud storage in the EU
2. Translate: We process it through our enterprise translation engine
3. Download: You get a secure, time-limited link
4. Delete: 30 minutes later, both the original and translation are permanently deleted

That's it. No history. No dashboard of past translations. No way for us to go back and look at what you translated last week.

For more details on the workflow and tradeoffs, see How noll works.

The tradeoff

Yes, this means you can't log in and see your translation history. If you close the browser before downloading, the file is gone.

We think that's a feature, not a bug. But if you need persistent storage and document management, we're probably not the right tool—and that's okay.

We built noll for a specific use case: fast, secure translation of documents you don't want sitting on someone else's servers.

What's coming

In future posts, we'll dive deep into:

• Why not Google or DeepL? — the privacy tradeoffs of popular tools
• How to evaluate any translation service for sensitive documents
• Industry-specific guides for legal, HR, and healthcare teams
• Feature announcements and updates

Get started

Ready to try privacy-respecting document translation?

Head over to noll.to and translate your first document for free. No account required.

Further reading

• Which translation services should I use for sensitive documents?
• We don't want your data
• GDPR & AI Act compliance