Help and guide

What is Tilvar?

Tilvar is an AI assistant that cares about scientific and academic text and runs on our own server. It translates text, documents and websites, chats, and understands images and audio. Every tab in the left menu opens one tool.

The Translate tab

Paste text, choose the target language and press “Translate”. The source language is detected automatically. Turkic languages are always written in the Turkey-Turkish alphabet. “Back-translate check” translates the result back so you can spot differences; “Save as task” moves the text to the editing workspace.

Chat

A real conversation: ask questions, have text written, discuss a topic; it also translates when you ask (“translate this into German”). When useful it searches the web and shows its sources; untick “Search the web when useful” to turn that off. It answers currency questions with worldwide rates. Answers come in the language you write in.

Deep thinking

Tick “Think deeply (slower)” before you send a question that needs care: maths, logic, planning, code or a tricky decision. The assistant works through it step by step first (you can open its thought process) and the answer usually gets more reliable, but it takes longer.

Attaching files and images

With 📎 in the chat box (or by dragging and dropping, or Ctrl+V for images) attach up to 4 files: images, PDF, DOCX, TXT, MD, CSV, HTML, SRT. Then ask questions, have them summarised, or say “translate this file”. In long documents the passages relevant to your question are picked. The image itself is not stored; only the text read from it and a short note stay with the chat.

Writing by voice

The 🎤 button in the chat box turns your speech into text and adds it to the box. The browser asks for microphone permission the first time.

Long chats and compaction

When a chat grows long, the older messages turn into a short summary by themselves and the last two messages stay as they are, so the thread is not lost. You can also press “Compact chat” or type /compact in the box. The summary appears in the chat as an expandable card.

The Image tab

Drop, choose or paste an image. “What is in it?” describes it, “Read the text” extracts the text in it, “Translate the text” reads the text and translates it into the target language; you can also ask your own question. It works well on signs, menus, photos of documents and screenshots. Images are not stored.

The Audio tab

Record, or choose an audio or video file; “Write it down” turns the speech into text, “Write it down and translate” translates it into the target language. Up to 10 minutes; long audio is cut into parts under 30 seconds. Recordings are not stored.

Documents and websites

In the Documents tab upload a PDF, DOCX, TXT, HTML or SRT file; the translation runs in the background and you follow its progress in the Tasks tab. The Website tab translates an address; sites are fetched only through the Tor network. For long documents use these tabs instead of the chat.

Tasks and editing

Open a task to edit it sentence by sentence: Ctrl+Enter confirms and moves on, Alt+Up/Down moves between sentences. Confirmed sentences go into your translation memory. You can download results as plain document, TMX, XLIFF, CSV, DOCX or SRT.

Glossary and translation memory

Terms you add to the glossary are used exactly in translations (a product name, for example). The translation memory remembers the sentences you confirmed and reuses them when the same sentence comes again. Both belong to you only; inside an organization they can be shared.

Working as a team

In the Team tab create an organization and invite a few people: shared tasks, a shared glossary and memory, comments and a live view of who is editing which sentence. Roles: viewer, editor, admin, owner. Creating an organization is part of the Supporter and Academic tiers; joining one is free for everybody.

History

Your translations and chats can be searched in the History tab. Because space is limited, old records are deleted according to your tier (30 days for free members). You can delete items one by one or all at once.

Account, quotas and tiers

Your daily character quota depends on your tier; when the server is idle the quota grows by itself. An image or a recording counts 1,000 characters each time. Supporters and academics get priority and wider limits; the details are on the Membership page. One account opens every tool in Athena; password, e-mail and API key are on the account page of the main site.

API and browser extension

The Supporter and Academic tiers can call Tilvar from their own tools (translation, chat, images, audio) and use the browser extension: it translates pages in place, selected text and text in images. Documentation and the download link are on the API page of the main site. API use is limited separately.

Your data

Everything is processed on our own server; your text is not sent to third-party translation services. While web search is on in the chat, only the short search query the AI writes goes out, through Tor. Images and recordings are not stored. When you delete your account everything is deleted. Details are on the Privacy page of the main site.

Shortcuts and tips

Ctrl+K opens the command palette (tabs, language, theme). Ctrl+Enter translates in the translate box. In the chat Enter sends and Shift+Enter adds a new line; paste images with Ctrl+V. You can change the interface language in Settings.

Good to know

Translations are machine translations: review important text, especially numbers, names and dates. Quality varies more in low-resource languages. Chat answers can be wrong too; check web sources. Because the server is a single small machine, jobs may queue up at busy hours.

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Membership and tiers · API and browser extension · Privacy · About