[2] This product was expected to be named Google Translation Center, as had been announced in August 2008.

However, the Google Translation Toolkit turned out to be a less ambitious product: "document rather than project-based, intended not as a process management package but simply another personal translation memory tool".

[4] A review of the toolkit in Multilingual noted: "The significance of the Google Translator Toolkit is its position as a fully online software-as-a-service (SaaS) that mainstreams some backend enterprise features and hitherto fringe innovations, presaging a radical change in how and by whom the translation is performed".

Translations could be downloaded and, for Wikipedia articles, published back to the source pages.

[8][9] Google Translator Toolkit used to provide an API which was restricted to approved users only.