Terms of use

These terms apply when you use Talkawa (“the app”) and the translation service behind it, published by Panlab Limited, Hong Kong (“we”, “us”). By using the app you agree to them.

1. The service

The app helps two people talk: it recognises what each of them says, translates it with AI, and shows or reads out the translation. Machine translation can be wrong, incomplete or misleading, so check anything important with someone who speaks both languages. Do not rely on the app in an emergency, or for medical, legal, financial or safety decisions.

2. Tokens

The app measures use in tokens, which reflect what the AI services cost us. A translated sentence uses about 20 tokens (more for very long ones), a live-translation preview 15, cloud transcription 7 per second of speech, and the natural voice about 1.5 per character read aloud (about 3 per Chinese, Japanese or Korean character).
Tokens are spent in this order: your one-time welcome tokens, then today’s free tokens, then this month’s Plus allowance, then the tokens you bought. Each request is paid entirely from one of them; if one cannot cover it, the next one is used.
The natural voice uses its one-time trial first, then Plus, then bought tokens; it never uses the welcome or daily free tokens. Live translation is paid from the welcome tokens; once they are gone it needs Plus, and is then paid from Plus and bought tokens.
The daily free tokens refill at 00:00 UTC. Unused daily tokens do not carry over.
Plus tokens refill every month on the day of the month you first subscribed, on the yearly plan too. Unused Plus tokens do not carry over to the next month.
Bought tokens never expire. They have no cash value, cannot be exchanged for money and cannot be transferred to anyone else. Through Restore purchases you can use them on up to 5 iPhones signed in to the same Apple Account.
Each iPhone receives the free welcome tokens and the natural voice trial once. Deleting and reinstalling the app does not give them again.
If Apple refunds a purchase, the tokens it added are taken off your bought tokens, which never go below zero.

3. Plus

Plus is an auto-renewable subscription: US$4.99 a month or US$49.99 a year (the App Store shows the price in your currency). Both include 150,000 tokens a month, live translation and the natural voice.
Payment is charged to your Apple Account when you confirm the purchase. The subscription renews automatically at the end of each period, and your Apple Account is charged for the next period, unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the current period.
You can manage or cancel the subscription in your Apple Account settings (on your iPhone: Settings → your name → Subscriptions) or in the app under Settings → Manage subscription. Cancelling stops the next renewal; Plus stays active until the end of the period you have paid for.
Refunds are handled by Apple under its own terms (reportaproblem.apple.com); we cannot issue refunds ourselves.

4. Free allowances may change

The free allowances (currently 5,000 welcome tokens per iPhone, 600 tokens a day and a 4,500-token natural voice trial) may change or end at any time. We will not take away tokens you have bought, or reduce the Plus allowance of a period you have already paid for.

5. Acceptable use

Use the app lawfully and with respect for the people you talk to. Do not:

use it to harass, threaten or deceive anyone;
record or translate someone without their agreement where the law requires it;
try to get the free allowances more than once, for example by altering the app or its device ID;
reach our server other than through the app, or overload, probe or reverse-engineer it;
resell the service.

We may suspend a device that breaks these rules.

6. Availability and changes

We work to keep the service running, but it depends on our providers and on your network, so we cannot promise that it will always be available or free of errors. We may change, suspend or end the service or any feature of it. If we end the service, we will say so in the app and on this page beforehand wherever we can.

7. Limits of liability

The app is provided “as is”. As far as the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss caused by a wrong or missing translation, and our total liability to you is limited to what you paid for purchases in the app in the 12 months before the claim. Nothing in these terms limits a liability that the law does not allow to be limited, or your statutory rights as a consumer.

8. Apple’s licence terms

Apple’s standard Licensed Application End User License Agreement also applies to the app.

9. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and its courts have jurisdiction.

10. Contact

Panlab Limited, Hong Kong. Email: contact@talkawa.com