Privacy policy
Last updated: 2 November 2026. If the Arabic and English versions differ, the Arabic version applies.
Tarjum (tarjum.org) is a book translation service based in Cairo, Egypt ("we"). This policy explains what personal data we collect, why, who receives it, how long we keep it, and your rights over it. It is part of our terms of use.
For anything about data protection: joe@replexity.com, or +20 104 465 5200.
Who is responsible for what
We are the controller of the data about your account, your billing, your messages to us and our own records, because we decide how it is used and why.
Personal data inside the books and files you upload, such as the names of authors or people mentioned, is different: you decide what goes in and why. You, or the organization you work for, are its controller, and we process it on your instructions to provide the service to you. This policy and our terms are your written instructions to us, including to send text to the providers listed below on their terms. You must make sure you have the right to upload and process it, and tell the people concerned where the law requires it.
What we collect
Your account
- Your name, email address and password. We store the password only as a hash that cannot be turned back into it.
- If you sign in with Google: your name, email address, profile picture and Google account ID.
- What you tell us when you sign up: your account type, your organization's name and team size, your years of experience, how many books you have translated, your languages and specializations, your credentials, your website, and how you heard about us.
Your activity in the service
- Your role in a workspace, and the email addresses of people you invite.
- What happens in your projects: who changed what and when, and the words and costs used.
- When you last signed in, and the browser details of your sessions.
Your work
- The books and files you upload, and their translations, glossaries, translation memories, comments, covers and layouts, and what you write to the assistant.
- Keys and sign-in tokens for AI providers, if you connect your accounts with them to Tarjum.
Billing
- Your plan, invoices, payment status and billing contact, and your billing address and tax number if you give them.
- Card details are entered with our payment provider, Paymob, and we do not store your full card number. If you choose to save a card, we keep a token from the provider, with the number hidden except for its last digits, the card brand, expiry date, cardholder name and the email tied to it.
- If you pay by bank transfer, InstaPay or a payment link: the payment reference and amount.
The contact form
- What you write in the site's contact form: your name, how to reach you, your organization, the kind of request and your message, and the page you sent it from.
The Tarjum blog: comments, claps and sharing
- Comments: the name you type and your comment are published after review. We don't ask for your email, and a comment that isn't published stays stored until we delete it. We keep your network address only as a code derived from it with a secret key that is never published, solely to stop abuse, and we delete it after 30 days. To limit abuse we also count the requests from each network, in the server's memory only and without storing them.
- Claps: a random identifier is stored in a cookie on our site, set only when you clap and kept for a year, so we can count your claps up to 50 per post. We don't store the identifier itself in our database, only a code derived from it with a secret key.
- Share buttons: plain links. Nothing loads from any social network unless you click one.
People without an account
- If you review a book through a link one of our customers sent you: the name you type and your comments.
- If a customer invites you to their workspace: your email address.
Technical records
- Server logs needed to run and secure the service, which may include your device's IP address, the time of a request and browser details.
- Records of translation and checking runs, which may include short excerpts of your book's text.
Sensitive data
We do not ask you for data about your health, beliefs or political opinions. We use payment data only to take your payments and keep the records the law requires. Please do not upload sensitive data about identifiable living people, such as medical records, identity numbers or children's data, unless you have the right to and your book needs it.
Cookies and browser storage
We use a sign-in cookie that lasts up to 14 days, and a short-lived cookie that protects Google sign-in. Your browser also keeps simple preferences, such as your interface language. We do not use advertising cookies or analytics trackers. The site and the app load their fonts from Google Fonts, so your device's IP address reaches Google when you open a page.
Why we use it, and our legal basis
| Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Running your account, and translating, editing, laying out and exporting your books | Performing our contract with you, and your consent |
| Issuing invoices, taking payments and keeping payment records | Performing the contract, and legal duty |
| Service email, such as confirmations, invitations, receipts and alerts | Performing the contract |
| Answering people who write to us | Your consent, since you wrote to us |
| Supporting you, fixing faults, securing the service and preventing abuse | Performing the contract, and our legitimate rights |
| Complying with the law, and proving or defending our rights | Legal duty, and our right to legal defense |
| Fixing and improving the service, as set out under Improving Tarjum | Our legitimate rights |
| Adding a project's layout labels to our own benchmarks | Only with the consent of the project's owner |
We do not sell personal data. We do not use it for advertising. We do not send you marketing messages unless you have agreed, and you can stop them at any time by writing to us.
Improving Tarjum
We use technical records and fault reports to fix and improve the service. Word and phrase replacements your team accepts stay inside your organization. We do not use them for other customers.
Google account data
If you sign in with Google, we receive only your basic profile: name, email address, profile picture and account ID. We ask for no other Google data, and we cannot read your Gmail, Drive or contacts.
We use this data only to create your account, sign you in, show your name and picture in Tarjum, send you service email, take your payments through Paymob, support you, secure the service, prevent abuse and comply with the law. We do not sell it, use it for advertising, or send it to AI providers. We store it with your account until the account is deleted. You can remove Tarjum's access at any time from your Google Account's security settings.
Tarjum's use of information received from Google adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements.
Who receives your information
Your work is visible to the people in your workspace and to those you share it with, such as reviewers you send a link to.
A limited number of our staff can see your account and your work. They do so to operate and secure the service, support you, fix faults, look into abuse and meet legal duties. When we enter an account as its user, that sign-in is recorded.
We use these providers to run the service. We may add or replace providers, and we update this table when we do:
| Provider | What for | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| AI and machine translation providers: Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Lara Translate, and OpenRouter with the companies running the models it reaches | Translating, reviewing and laying out your book, researching the author and the work, estimating cost, and the assistant | Text and images from your book and its set pages, with the publisher and translator names and logo printed on them; the book's title and author and samples of its text; your glossaries and translation memories; what you write to the assistant; reviewers' comments and their names when you ask for a draft change from them. Each as needed for its step |
| Any AI provider you connect with your own key | The same | The same, under your own agreement with them |
| Hetzner | Hosting our servers and database in Germany | Data stored on our servers |
| Brevo | Sending email | Your email address and the message |
| Our mailbox host | Receiving email sent to our addresses | Your message and email address |
| Paymob | Taking payments | Your payment details, and the payer's name and email address |
| Search, dictionary, encyclopedia and book catalogue services and public picture libraries, such as DuckDuckGo, Open Library and Wikimedia | Researching the author and the work, looking up terms, and suggesting cover pictures | The book's title and author, individual words and short phrases, and search words |
| Adobe and muAPI | Only if you upload an InDesign file or use picture editing | The file or pictures involved |
| Google Fonts | Fonts for the site and the app | Your device's IP address |
How AI providers treat your text: each provider handles text under its own terms. Depending on the service, a provider may keep text sent to it, or use it to improve its models. This cannot be undone once text has been sent. Do not upload anything you are not willing to have reach them. If you need a different arrangement, write to us before you upload.
We may disclose information when the law, a court order or a competent authority requires it, or where needed to protect the service, our rights or other people, or to prove or defend a legal right.
If this service is merged, sold, reorganized or moved to another company, your data may pass to the new owner, and this policy continues to apply to it until you are told of a change.
Where your data is, and your consent to moving it
Our servers are in Germany. AI providers and the other services above may process data in other countries, including the United States. These countries may not offer the level of protection Egyptian law offers. The service cannot run without this: your data is stored outside Egypt, and translation cannot run without sending your book's text to these providers. This transfer is needed to perform our contract with you and the agreements we make with these providers to serve you.
By ticking the box when you sign up or first sign in, you explicitly consent to your data being moved, stored and processed outside Egypt in this way, and to your payment data being processed as described above. You can withdraw this consent at any time by asking us to close your account. Withdrawing does not affect what happened before.
How long we keep it
- Your account and your work: while your account is active. When you ask us to delete them, we delete them from our live systems, or make them no longer identify you, as soon as we reasonably can, and tell you. Copies can stay in our backups for longer, until those backups are deleted. We may delete inactive accounts 24 months after the last sign-in, after telling you.
- Invoices and payment records: as long as tax, accounting and payment laws require.
- A saved card: until you remove it or your account is deleted. Removing a card erases its token, so it cannot be charged, and its hidden-number details stay with your payment records.
- Contact form messages: as long as we need them to answer you and follow up, and we delete them when you ask.
- Server logs: as long as we need them to run and secure the service.
- Records of consents and requests: as long as the law requires.
We may keep data longer where the law requires it, or where we need it to prove or defend a legal right, and we then use it only for that purpose, and make it no longer identify you where the law requires it and that is practical.
Your rights
Egypt's Personal Data Protection Law No. 151 of 2020 gives you the right to:
- know what we hold about you, see it and obtain it;
- withdraw your earlier consent;
- ask us to correct, change, delete, add to or update your data;
- limit processing to a specific scope;
- be told of any breach of your data;
- object to the processing of your data, or its results, where it conflicts with your fundamental rights and freedoms.
To use any of these rights, write to the address above. We may ask you to prove who you are. We answer within 6 working days of your request, and if carrying it out takes longer, we tell you so and why.
We may charge the fee the Personal Data Protection Center sets under the law. We may also refuse or limit a request as far as the law allows, for example for invoices we must keep. If withdrawing consent or deleting your data stops us providing the service, we may have to close your account. You can export your books from Tarjum while your account is active.
If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Personal Data Protection Center, and you can go to court.
If you are a person named in a book one of our customers uploaded, write to the address above. We will answer within 6 working days and refer you to the book's publisher or translator, who controls that data.
Data security
We protect data with technical and organizational measures, including encrypted connections to the service, restricted access, and storing passwords only as hashes. No service is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee that unauthorized access will never happen. You must keep your password confidential.
If there is a breach
If your data is breached, we will tell the Personal Data Protection Center, and tell you by email, as the law requires and within the times it sets.
Children
Tarjum is for people aged 18 or over, and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone younger. If you learn that a child under 18 has created an account, write to us and we will delete it.
If you live outside Egypt
Nothing in this policy removes rights that the mandatory law of your country gives you.
Changes
We may change this policy. We will post any change here and update the date above, and tell you in the service or by email about any significant change. If a change needs your consent, we will ask for it.