Configuration

Environment variables

Variable	Default	Description
POLYGLOT_MODEL	translategemma:12b	Default Ollama model for translation
POLYGLOT_CONCURRENCY	1	Max concurrent Ollama API calls

Model selection

Three TranslateGemma model sizes are available:

Model	Parameters	VRAM	Use case
translategemma:4b	4 billion	3.3 GB	Quick translations, limited GPU
translategemma:12b	12 billion	8.1 GB	General use, balanced quality/speed
translategemma:27b	27 billion	17 GB	Maximum quality, large GPU required

Set the default model via environment variable:

export POLYGLOT_MODEL=translategemma:4b

Or override per-request:

from pypolyglot import translate, TranslateOptions

result = await translate("Hello", "en", "ja",
    TranslateOptions(model="translategemma:27b"))

Concurrency

The concurrency setting controls how many Ollama API calls run simultaneously. This is GPU-bound — running too many concurrent calls can cause VRAM exhaustion.

export POLYGLOT_CONCURRENCY=2

Recommendations:

• 1 (default) — Safe for any GPU, sequential processing
• 2 — Good for 12+ GB VRAM with the 4b model
• 3 — Maximum, only for 24+ GB VRAM

The semaphore prevents more than concurrency calls from hitting the GPU at once. Additional requests queue until a slot opens.

Glossary customization

The built-in software glossary covers 12 technical terms. Add your own:

from pypolyglot import translate, TranslateOptions, GlossaryEntry

custom_glossary = [
    GlossaryEntry("Widget", {"ja": "ウィジェット", "zh": "小部件"}),
    GlossaryEntry("Dashboard", {"ja": "ダッシュボード", "zh": "仪表盘"}),
]

result = await translate(text, "en", "ja",
    TranslateOptions(glossary=custom_glossary))

Glossary entries only apply when the term appears in the source text AND the target language has a translation defined.

Cache behavior

Translation cache stores segment-level results in .polyglot-cache.json. It uses Levenshtein distance for fuzzy matching — segments that are similar enough to a cached entry reuse the cached translation.

Cache is per-directory and per-language pair. To clear it, delete the cache file:

rm .polyglot-cache.json