---
agentTools:
  projectIndex: https://api.encoding.com/llms.txt
---

# 13 August 2026

## Country/region-specific translation languages

The **translate** [option](https://api.encoding.com/reference/caption-translate) now accepts country/region-qualified language codes for `source_language` and `target_language`. Append an ISO-3166-1 alpha-2 country code to an ISO-639 language code to request a regional variant, e.g. `fr-ca` (French, Canada), `pt-br` (Portuguese, Brazil) or `es-mx` (Spanish, Mexico).

Plain 2- or 3-character language codes continue to work unchanged. Only real language-region locales are accepted; unrecognized combinations (e.g. `es-ca`) are rejected.

```xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<query>
    <userid>[UserID]</userid> <!-- required -->
    <userkey>[UserKey]</userkey> <!-- required -->
    <action>[Action]</action> <!-- required -->
    <source>[SourceFile]</source> <!-- required -->
    <format>
        <output>closed_captions</output> <!-- required-->
        <translate>
            <source_language>en</source_language>
            <target_language>fr-ca</target_language>
        </translate>
    </format>
</query>
```
```json
{
  "query": {
    "userid": "[UserID]", // required
    "userkey": "[UserKey]", // required
    "action": "[Action]", // required
    "source": "[SourceFile]", // required
    "format": {
      "output": "closed_captions",
      "translate": {
        "source_language": "en",
        "target_language": "fr-ca"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

| Parameter            | Description     | Allowed Values                                                           | Default Value |
| :------------------- | :-------------- | :----------------------------------------------------------------------- | :------------ |
| **source\_language** | Source language | 2- or 3-character language code, optionally with a country/region suffix | *none*        |
| **target\_language** | Target language | 2- or 3-character language code, optionally with a country/region suffix | *none*        |