Terms of Service of THEPURELANGUAGE.COM

Last Updated: November 7, 2026

Welcome to ThePureLanguage.com. These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of the website located at https://www.thepurelanguage.com (the "Website") and all related services provided by 2705463 ONTARIO INC. ("ThePureLanguage", "we", "our", or "us"). "Services" refers to the website, content, software, and any related features provided by ThePureLanguage. "User," "you," and "your" refer to any individual or entity accessing or using the Services. By accessing or using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms.

1. Acceptance of Terms

By using the Service, you confirm that you:

  • Have read, understood, and agree to these Terms;
  • Are at least 16 years old (see Section 1.1);
  • Have the legal capacity to enter into this agreement.

If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1.1 Age Requirement — This Service Is Not for Children

ThePureLanguage is not intended for children and is not directed to children.

The Service is a general-audience reference and study tool for adults and for learners aged 16 or over. If you are under 16, you may not use the Service.

  • Minimum age: 16. We apply a single threshold of 16 worldwide rather than the lowest age any jurisdiction permits. You may not use the Service, or agree to these Terms, if you are under 16.
  • No children’s content. We do not provide, and will not provide, any learning section, tool, game or article directed to or designed for children. Nothing on the Service is presented for a child audience.
  • Parents, guardians and teachers. If you are an adult and you permit a person under 16 to view the Service — for example a teacher using a printable worksheet in class — you do so on your own responsibility, you remain the user under these Terms, and you are responsible for supervising that person’s use, including any material they may reach through advertisements or external links. Nothing here is an invitation for a child to use the Service themselves.
  • No verification. We operate no accounts and collect no date of birth, so we cannot verify anyone’s age. This Section is a condition of use and a statement of who the Service is for; it is not a technical control.
  • Enforcement. If we become aware that a user is under 16, we may block access and will delete any personal information we can identify as theirs. See Section 14 of our Privacy Policy, which sets out our full position on COPPA, the UK Age Appropriate Design Code, GDPR/GDPR-K and Québec Law 25, and how to ask us to delete a child’s data.

2. Description of the Service

ThePureLanguage is a general-audience language reference and study service for adults and learners aged 16 or over (Section 1.1). It is not a children’s service and contains no children’s learning section. It provides:

  • A language dictionary and translation lookup tool;
  • Script and format conversion tools (e.g., Simplified ↔ Traditional Chinese characters, Pinyin);
  • Automated translation assistance through third‑party APIs (e.g., Microsoft Translator);
  • Display of ads (Google Ads/AdSense) and essential cookies as needed for website functionality;
  • Server-side monitoring, diagnostics and abuse prevention through Microsoft Azure Application Insights, which is necessary to keep the Service running and available (see Section 5.2).

The Service is provided free of charge, with no accounts, no subscriptions, and no paid features unless otherwise agreed in writing.

3. Intellectual Property, Restrictions and Permitted Reuse

All content made available through the Service, including our dictionary data, UI elements, text, images, code, and structure (collectively the "Content"), is protected by copyright and other IP laws. All intellectual property rights in the Services are owned by or licensed to ThePureLanguage.

Third‑party open‑source components are excluded. The "Content" does not include the open‑source software and openly licensed data incorporated into the Service — such as the Chinese character stroke data we serve from our own servers, and the English definitions in our HSK word lists, flashcards, games and downloads that are adapted from CC-CEDICT and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (marked † where they are listed) — which remain governed solely by their own licenses as listed on our Open Source Licenses page, and nothing in this Section limits, or is intended to limit, any right those licenses grant you.

You agree not to:

  • Modify, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works from, publicly display, or commercially exploit any portion of the Services without prior written consent;
  • Copy, scrape, index, or bulk‑download our data (including automated extraction by bots, crawlers, or bulk export tools);
  • Reverse‑engineer, decompile, disassemble, modify, or create derivative works of the Service or any portion thereof;
  • Use automated tools to generate heavy load or bypass caching;
  • Republish, redistribute, sell, sublicense, or otherwise commercially exploit substantial portions of the Content or any database compiled, in whole or in part, from the Content without our prior written consent.

Rights preserved by law and third-party licences: The restrictions above apply only to the extent permitted by applicable law. They do not restrict rights that cannot lawfully be excluded by contract, including applicable rights to observe, study or test software and permitted decompilation for interoperability under EU law. They do not restrict reuse of material covered by an applicable third-party or open licence, including definitions marked † under CC BY-SA 4.0 (see Licenses). These Terms do not give us ownership of ideas or principles that copyright law does not protect.

Permitted reuse of individual outputs (non‑bulk):

  • You may reuse individual translation outputs (single results or small numbers of results) for personal, academic, editorial, or non‑commercial purposes provided you do not present our content as your own dataset and include attribution to ThePureLanguage.com where reasonable.
  • Commercial uses that depend on bulk access to, automated extraction of, or redistribution of the Content require our prior written permission and may be subject to licensing fees and additional terms.

Limited License: ThePureLanguage grants you a limited, revocable, non‑exclusive license to access and use the Service and individual translation outputs for personal, non-commercial use only in accordance with these Terms. Any rights not expressly granted herein are reserved by us.

3.1 Third-Party Trademarks

The names of examinations, apps, websites, services, devices and companies that appear on the Service are owned by their respective owners and may be protected by trademark law. These include HSK, HSKK, YCT, TOEFL, GRE and IELTS, and the names of apps, platforms and services such as Anki, Duolingo, Pleco, WeChat, Alipay, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Android. We use them only to identify those products and to describe, explain or compare them truthfully. Their use does not mean that any owner has sponsored, endorsed, approved or is affiliated with ThePureLanguage or any of its content, and our materials are not official materials of any examination body (see section 9.4). Our games and tools use original product names. The Microsoft logo, a trademark of the Microsoft group of companies, appears only in the “Translated by” attribution beside text that Microsoft Translator supplied on our translation pages, in the form Microsoft’s Translator attribution guidelines set out (see section 5). If you believe something on the Service uses your trademark or copyright improperly, please tell us (see section 7) and we will review it promptly.

4. User Submissions

You may submit text to the Service only for the purpose of retrieving translations or dictionary results. You represent that:

  • You have the right to provide the submitted text;
  • Your text does not violate any third‑party rights;
  • Your usage is lawful and not harmful.

You retain ownership of your submitted text. We do not claim ownership over it. However, we reserve the right to remove submissions that violate these Terms or applicable law.

4.1 Leaderboard Display Names & User-Generated Content

Certain games on the Website let you submit your score to a public leaderboard, where it is shown next to a display name. That display name is always generated automatically by us: a random name (for example, “SwiftPanda42”) built from a fixed word list and derived from the random identifier your browser generated. You do not choose it, it is not based on any information about you, and no nickname is collected from you on any game: there is no nickname field, and any name your device may send is ignored and discarded.

You agree not to try to place your own name or other text on a leaderboard by any other means, for example by sending requests to the Website directly. You acknowledge and agree that:

  • Display names are shown publicly, where they may be viewed by anyone, including minors;
  • Display names are assigned by us from a fixed word list, are not chosen by any user, and contain no personal information;
  • We may remove, replace, or refuse any leaderboard entry or display name at any time, with or without notice, at our sole discretion.

A generated display name does not represent you. It is produced mechanically from a random identifier, so the words, animal, number or any other part of it are chosen by chance and not by anyone. No part of a display name describes, characterises or refers to the player it is shown beside, and we do not use it to associate any player with any animal, word, number, trait or other thing. Any resemblance between a generated name and a person, group, belief or meaning is coincidental and unintended.

If you see a display name or entry that you believe is inappropriate, or if the name assigned to you offends you, please tell us via our contact page and we will take reasonable steps to address it, for example by removing the entry.

5. Third‑Party Microsoft Azure Services (Azure Translator, Azure AI Speech & Application Insights)

The Service may use Microsoft Azure Translator as a fallback translation provider — including on the translator pages unless you set their Enhance Translation with Microsoft Translator control to Off. The Chinese and English translation pages also offer Fill Missing Words and Fill Missing Words + Context; the Pinyin pages offer Whole line instead. Microsoft Translator may also be used on the Simplified ↔ Traditional Converter, where words or characters not found in our dictionary are marked with a cloud icon, and on Translate Chinese from a Photo unless you switch off its Microsoft Translator option. Your text is transmitted securely; in text mode it is not stored, and in document or asynchronous mode may be temporarily stored for up to 48 hours.

On the translator pages, everything marked with a cloud icon, and the sentence written by Make a sentence from my choices, is Microsoft's machine translation and is credited "Translated by Microsoft" beside it. A meaning that is highlighted or pre-ticked was picked by that machine reading of your whole line and may be wrong for your sentence; change it if it is. Make a sentence from my choices is experimental: Microsoft may not keep a meaning you chose, and the page tells you when it did not. None of it is a professional translation. Do not rely on it for legal, medical, safety or other decisions where a mistake matters.

Caching Policy

  • We cache only translation outputs from Microsoft for up to 6 months to improve performance; an automatic job deletes expired outputs every six hours. See Section 5.2 of our Privacy Policy.

Microsoft Data Privacy

Text‑to‑Speech (Microsoft Azure AI Speech)

Where the Service offers a “Listen” button, the short text to be spoken is sent from our servers to Microsoft Azure AI Speech, which returns synthesised audio. Only the text is transmitted — capped at 100 characters (24 for a single pinyin syllable) — and your IP address and browser details are not sent to Microsoft by this feature. This is a playback feature only and involves no microphone access. Audio is provided for learning purposes and pronunciation may not be perfect in every context. See Section 5.3 of our Privacy Policy.

Synthetic Voices

Every voice you hear on this Website is synthesized speech, not a recording of a person. That includes the pronunciation buttons, the listening games and quizzes, the text reader, and the English narration and Chinese audio in our short lesson videos. All of it is generated with Microsoft Azure AI Speech neural text-to-speech voices. No voice on the Website is modelled on, or presented as, any real individual.

5.1 Microphone & Browser Speech Recognition

Certain optional practice features (the Speaking Practice pages) can use your device's microphone to score how you pronounce a word. Use of the microphone is entirely voluntary: it is requested only on those pages, only after you tap the microphone button, and only if you grant your browser's permission prompt. You may decline or later revoke that permission in your browser at any time; the pages remain usable without it, with automatic pronunciation scoring unavailable.

We do not record, receive, store or transmit your voice. No audio is ever sent to our servers, and we do not use voice input for identification or biometric purposes, or to train artificial-intelligence models.

You acknowledge, however, that the speech recognition is performed by your browser using its built-in Web Speech API, not by us. Most browsers transmit the captured audio to their own vendor's servers for transcription (for example Google in Chrome, or Microsoft in Edge). That transfer is between you and your browser vendor and is governed by that vendor's terms and privacy policy. We do not control it, receive any copy of the audio, or accept responsibility for the vendor's handling of it. If you do not agree to your browser transmitting audio to its vendor, do not grant microphone permission. See Section 18 of our Privacy Policy for details.

5.2 Website Analytics & Diagnostics (Microsoft Azure Application Insights)

We use Microsoft Azure Application Insights to monitor the Website — to keep it running, to diagnose errors and slow pages, and to detect and prevent automated abuse and bulk extraction of our data. Microsoft acts as our processor for this data. By using the Service you acknowledge that this monitoring takes place, that it is strictly necessary to operate and protect a free service, and that it cannot be switched off while you use the Service.

Records are written on our servers and describe the request rather than the person making it: the address requested, the response and how long it took; an approximate location and a browser and operating-system type; whether the request appeared to come from an automated client; the outcome of our access-control and request-limit checks; errors and diagnostic messages; and records of the calls our server makes to Microsoft's own services on your behalf.

What it does not contain. This monitoring does not record the text you submit for translation or the results returned to you, anything you type into the site search, any microphone audio or transcript, your IP address, your full User-Agent string, or the content of any request. It is server-side only: we do not load any browser-side analytics code, it sets no cookie and uses no browser storage, and it cannot follow you to any other website. It is not used for advertising, personalization or profiling, and this data is not sold or shared for such purposes.

Data is retained for 90 days and then deleted automatically by Microsoft. Sections 19 and 20 of our Privacy Policy set out in full what is and is not collected — including Section 19.6 on the security and access-control records, and Section 19.5 on the nine study counters described in Section 6 below. Microsoft's own practices are described in the Microsoft Privacy Statement.

Nothing in this Section obliges us to retain, produce or restore any such record. These records exist for the operation and protection of the Service, are deleted on the schedule above, and we give no undertaking that any particular record of your use exists or will be available at any time.

6. Advertising and Cookies

The Service uses:

  • Google Ads (AdSense), including related-search ad units, to display advertising with user consent. Search terms you type into a related-search box are sent to and handled by Google, not by us — see Section 7 of our Privacy Policy;
  • Two strictly necessary first-party cookies: a security cookie (.AspNetCore.Antiforgery.<suffix>) on pages with a form, which protects form submissions against cross-site request forgery, and a session cookie (.AspNetCore.Session) that is set only when a page stores temporary session data and that ordinary visits do not currently receive. Each holds only a random value, is deleted when your browser session ends, and is not used for advertising (see Section 2.4 of our Privacy Policy);
  • Browser localStorage to save your flashcard learning progress, preferences, study streak, and session data locally on your device. This data is not transmitted to our servers, with three exceptions: (a) if you choose to submit a score to a public leaderboard, that submission includes a random identifier your browser generated (see Section 4.1 and Section 17 of our Privacy Policy); (b) when a study streak reaches a new day, your browser may report that fact together with the streak length as one of four broad bands (1, 2-6, 7-29, 30+) — where the GDPR applies, only with your consent; never the exact number of days, never any saved word, score or nickname, and with no identifier of any kind attached (see Section 19.5 of our Privacy Policy); and (c) if you press Share on a game result, the link you share carries that result in its address — your score and difficulty setting, or the colours of your Tone Tiles or 每日猜单词 grid but never its letters — with no identifier or nickname attached (see Section 2.4 of our Privacy Policy);
  • Nine study counters, sent by a small script in your browser, recording that a game was started or finished, a word saved, a page printed, a share button pressed, a short lesson video started or its closing link followed, or a visit that opened directly on a flashcard, dictionary-word or sentence-word page active, so that we can tell which of our free study features are used at all. They set no cookie and carry no identifier and none of your content. Where the GDPR applies they are sent only with your consent, given through our consent message, and they are switched off entirely if your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal (see Section 19.5 of our Privacy Policy);
  • Contextual-link and activity next-step counts recording whether a tested position or result card was reached and its link followed. They carry only fixed experiment choices or card-rule/activity labels, no identifier or input, add no analytics storage, follow the same consent rule, and honour Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control. A requested word-game handoff is usable for 15 minutes in local storage and is removed when consumed (see Section 19.7 of our Privacy Policy);
  • Server-side monitoring and diagnostics (Microsoft Azure Application Insights), which records the request rather than the person making it, sets no cookie, uses no browser storage, loads no code into your browser, and never records your translations, your searches or your IP address — see Section 5.2 and Section 19 of our Privacy Policy;
  • Where the law requires consent, non-essential cookies and our browser-side counters are used only after consent via our CMP, which you can reopen or withdraw from the “Cookie settings” link in the footer of every page.

Your ad personalization choices can be managed at: https://www.google.com/settings/ads. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

7. DMCA / Copyright Complaints

If you believe your copyrighted work has been infringed, submit a notice to:

DMCA Agent:
2705463 ONTARIO INC.
Email: thepurelanguagecom@gmail.com
Website: www.thepurelanguage.com

Include sufficient detail to identify the allegedly infringed work and your contact information.

8. User Obligations & Prohibited Conduct

  • Use the Services legally, responsibly, and according to these Terms;
  • Do not use the Service for illegal purposes, breach security, scrape or redistribute content without permission, or interfere with operations;
  • Do not try to submit names, text or other content to leaderboards or any other public-facing feature, which shows only names we generate (see Section 4.1);
  • We reserve the right to block abusive, automated, or high-load traffic.

9. Warranty Disclaimer & Translation Accuracy

The Service is provided "as‑is" and "as‑available" without warranties of any kind. Automated translations, Pinyin transliterations, and Simplified ↔ Traditional script conversions are generated mechanically from dictionary data and/or third‑party AI services and may be inaccurate, incomplete, or inappropriate. Rare or archaic characters, proper names, and characters with multiple readings or regional variants are especially prone to error — one Simplified character can correspond to several Traditional characters (and vice versa), and automated tools cannot always choose correctly. All outputs are provided for reference only; you are responsible for verifying any output yourself (or with a qualified translator) before relying on it, publishing it, printing it, or using it in any document that matters. Use at your own risk.

9.1 Educational Content

Our learning material — lessons, articles, flashcards, quizzes, games, graded readers, grammar and radical pages, worksheets and learning paths — is self-study reference material, not instruction. It is not a curriculum, not a course, not a qualification, and not a substitute for a teacher, a school, or accredited exam preparation. We make no representation that it is suitable for any particular learner, learning need or educational setting, and no representation about exam outcomes; HSK, CET, IELTS and TOEFL are the property of their respective bodies and we are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or accredited under any of them. Section 9.4 applies in full to any use of the Service to prepare for an examination or to meet a language requirement.

Spoken audio is generated by machine text-to-speech and word meanings come from automated dictionary lookup. Both can be wrong — a mispronounced tone or a misleading single-word gloss is a normal limitation of these techniques, not a defect. Do not rely on our audio as a pronunciation model of record.

9.2 General-Audience Content

The Service is a general-audience language resource for users aged 16 or over (Section 1.1). Teaching a language honestly means covering how it is actually used, so the Service includes material on adult subject matter — for example slang and informal registers, drinking and toasting etiquette, romantic and affectionate expressions, and idioms whose literal sense is coarse. This material is reachable from anywhere on the Service, including from beginner pages. The Service is not a filtered or supervised environment, and we do not offer a restricted or child-safe mode. Advertisements and external links may likewise lead to content we do not control (Sections 6 and 12).

9.3 Examination, Admission, Scholarship, Visa and Immigration Information

Where any part of the Service refers to Chinese-language proficiency requirements published by third parties — such as examination boards, universities, scholarship schemes, employers, government departments and immigration authorities — that material is provided for general information purposes only. It is not advice of any kind — in particular it is not educational, admissions, careers, immigration, visa, employment, financial or legal advice, and it is not a substitute for advice from a qualified professional or from the body concerned.

9.3.1 No authority and no affiliation. Such requirements are set, varied, interpreted and applied solely by the body concerned and never by us. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, accredited by, or authorised to speak for any examination board, university, scholarship scheme, government department or immigration authority referred to on the Service. Names and marks are used for identification purposes only.

9.3.2 Currency and accuracy. Requirements of this kind change without notice and commonly differ between institutions, between programmes or departments within a single institution, between intakes, and between the different offices administering a single scheme. We therefore make no representation, warranty or undertaking, express or implied, that any level, score, threshold, deadline, condition or other figure referred to on the Service is current, complete, accurate, or applicable to your circumstances, and such material may be or become out of date at any time without any change being made to the relevant page.

9.3.3 Your obligation to verify. You must verify every such requirement directly with the institution, authority or scheme concerned, using its own current official publication, before relying upon it or taking any action or decision in connection with it. Where we link to an external source, that link leads to a website we do not control and Section 12 applies to it. Nothing on the Service assesses your circumstances, evaluates your eligibility, or produces a decision or recommendation about any application you may make.

9.3.4 Exclusion of liability. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, we accept no liability whatsoever for any loss, cost, expense, damage, missed deadline, rejected, delayed or unsuccessful application, refused visa, permit or admission, or other consequence of any kind arising out of or in connection with reliance upon such material, including where it has become inaccurate or out of date. Sections 9, 10 and 19 apply to it in full.

9.4 No Guarantee of Exam, Academic or Immigration Outcomes

9.4.1 This is not an official study guide. The Service is not an official, approved, licensed or endorsed preparation resource for HSK, HSKK, YCT, CET, 考研, IELTS, TOEFL or any other examination, test, certificate or assessment. Our word lists, level pages, flashcards, quizzes, mock or practice tests, printable worksheets and downloadable PDFs are our own self-study material, assembled from publicly available sources and our own dictionary data. They are not a syllabus, not an official word list of record, not past papers, and they are not produced, supplied, reviewed, verified, licensed or endorsed by any examination board or its agents. Where the name of an examination, level or band appears on the Service it is used descriptively, for identification only, and does not indicate any affiliation, accreditation or approval (Section 9.3.1).

9.4.2 No guarantee of a result. We make no representation, warranty, promise, undertaking or guarantee, express or implied, that studying with the Service — for any period of time, at any level, or to any score on any practice test, quiz or game here — will enable you to pass any examination, achieve any grade, level or band, obtain any certificate, or satisfy any requirement set by any third party. Scores, streaks, progress bars, XP, badges, levels and any similar indicator on the Service measure only your activity on this Service. They are not an assessment, evaluation, prediction or certification of your actual language ability, of your readiness to sit any examination, or of how you would perform in one. Content coverage is selective and may be incomplete: material that appears in a real examination may be absent from the Service, and material on the Service may be absent from, or presented differently in, a real examination.

9.4.3 Outcomes are decided by others, not by us. Whether you pass or fail an examination, and whether any examination board, university, college, scholarship scheme, employer, professional body, government department or immigration authority awards, accepts, admits, appoints, funds, issues, renews, refuses, withdraws or revokes anything, is determined solely by the body concerned, in its own discretion and under its own criteria and procedures. We have no involvement in, influence over, standing in, or knowledge of any such decision, and nothing on the Service assesses your eligibility or produces any decision, recommendation or prediction about any application, examination or status of yours.

9.4.4 Exclusion of liability for outcomes. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, we accept no liability whatsoever, to you or to anyone else, for any of the following, however it arises:

  • a failed, cancelled, withheld or invalidated examination result, or a result lower than the one you expected, needed or were required to obtain;
  • a refused, deferred, withdrawn, downgraded or revoked offer of admission, place, enrolment, scholarship, bursary, grant, funding, employment, promotion or professional registration;
  • a refused, delayed, cancelled, curtailed or revoked visa, entry clearance, permit, residence or citizenship application or status, or any removal, deportation or loss of status;
  • any examination, application, registration, tuition, agency, translation, travel, relocation or accommodation fee or cost incurred, whether or not refundable;
  • any missed deadline or intake, lost opportunity, lost or delayed income, wasted study time or wasted expenditure, or any distress, reputational or other non-financial loss;

arising out of, or in any way connected with, your use of, reliance on, or inability to use the Service or any part of it — including where our content, translations, audio, definitions, word lists, study guides, grammar notes or practice questions were inaccurate, incomplete, mistaken or out of date, and including where such an error contributed to your failing an examination. Using the Service or its learning material does not guarantee that you will pass any examination (Section 9.4.2). You use the Service to prepare for anything entirely at your own risk. Sections 9, 10, 11 and 19 apply to this Section in full.

9.4.5 Verify before you commit. Before sitting an examination, paying any fee, or making any decision that depends on an examination result or a language requirement, you must confirm the current syllabus, word list, format, fee, dates, deadlines, validity period and eligibility criteria directly with the examination board, institution or authority concerned, from its own current official publication. Section 9.3 applies to any such requirement referred to anywhere on the Service. If your studies matter to you, we recommend you also work with a qualified teacher or an accredited preparation course.

9.5 Pictures and Illustrations Are Memory Aids Only

The pictures, illustrations, icons and emoji in our flashcards, games, quizzes, worksheets and other learning material are there only to help you remember a word. They are simplified, and they may not fully or accurately represent the word, every meaning it has, or the situation in which it is used. A picture is not a definition: where a picture and the written meaning seem to differ, rely on the written meaning, which Sections 9 and 9.1 also cover.

9.5.1 No message is intended. No picture on the Service is intended to insult, criticise, mock or stereotype any person or group, or to make any statement about politics, religion or belief, sex or sexuality, sexual orientation, gender, nationality, ethnicity, culture, or any other characteristic or behaviour. Nor is any picture intended to promote, endorse or encourage any political position, religion or belief, sexual content or behaviour, or any other conduct. A picture of an activity illustrates the word for that activity; it does not recommend it. People shown in a picture are illustrative and are not intended to depict any real person.

9.5.2 Tell us. If you think a picture is offensive, misleading or wrong for its word, please tell us at the address in Section 21 and we will review it.

9.5.3 Exclusion of liability. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, we accept no liability for any loss, offence or other consequence arising from how a picture is interpreted, or from relying on a picture rather than the written meaning. Sections 9, 10 and 11 apply to this Section in full.

9.6 Text Read and Translated from a Photo or Image Is a Machine Reading, Not Guaranteed

Translate Chinese from a Photo and Chinese OCR recognize text automatically. How well they read depends on the photo or image: blur, low light, glare, shadows, a steep angle, distance, small or decorative print and text that is cut off or covered all make mistakes more likely. We do not guarantee that text read from a photo, camera image or other image, or any translation of it, is accurate or complete. It can miss text, show a character as unreadable (■) or, rarely, read a character wrongly. Pinyin & meaning gives dictionary senses for each word, not a translation of the line; with its Microsoft Translator switch on (the default), the English marked with a cloud is Microsoft's machine translation. Translate to English gives our translator's word-by-word machine translation of what was read, not a professional translation. Do not rely on it for allergies, medicine, prices you are committing to, or anything affecting your health or safety: ask staff, a pharmacist or another qualified person. Sections 9, 9.1, 10 and 11 apply to this Section in full. The reader these tools download, and the data it uses, are covered by Section 10.1.

10. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, ThePureLanguage is not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages. Maximum liability per user or incident is $10 CAD.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any liability that cannot be excluded or limited under the law that applies to you — including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, for intentional or grossly negligent conduct where the law does not allow it to be limited, or under mandatory consumer-protection law. If you are a consumer and the law of the country where you live does not allow a limitation of the kind in this Section, it applies to you only to the extent that law permits.

10.1 Your Device, Internet Connection and Data Charges

The Service is free, but you use it with your own device and internet connection. Any charges for that connection, including mobile data, roaming and Wi-Fi fees from your carrier or provider, are yours, and ThePureLanguage is not responsible for them. Some features download larger files when you use them. Translate Chinese from a Photo and Chinese OCR download a text-recognition reader of several megabytes the first time you add a photo or image; the button states the exact size before anything downloads, and your browser keeps the reader so it is not downloaded again each time. Audio, lesson videos, PDFs and other downloads are fetched when you play, open or download them. If you are on mobile data, and especially when roaming abroad, use Wi-Fi where you can. Reading a photo or image also uses your own device's processor, memory and battery, because the image is read on your device and never sent to us. Section 10 applies to this Section in full.

11. Indemnification

To the extent permitted by the law that applies to you, you agree to indemnify ThePureLanguage and its affiliates from claims, losses, or damages arising from your breach of these Terms, your unlawful use of the Service, or content you submit. This does not apply to losses caused by our own fault, and it does not apply to you as a consumer to the extent that the mandatory consumer-protection law of the country where you live does not allow it.

12. Third‑Party Links and Content

The Service may link to third-party websites. We do not control their content, services, or privacy practices. Your interactions with third-party services are at your own risk. Where such a link is an affiliate link, Section 20 applies in addition to this Section.

13. Modifications to the Service

We may modify, suspend, or discontinue the Service at any time. The Service is free and needs no account, so you may stop using it at any time.

We may update these Terms. Updated Terms are posted on the Website with a new “Last Updated” date and, for a change that materially affects you, a notice on the Website where practical. A change applies only to your use of the Service after it is posted, never to anything that happened before, and continuing to use the Service after that date means you accept the updated Terms. If you do not accept them, please stop using the Service. Where mandatory consumer-protection law requires more notice or your agreement for a change, we will comply with it.

14. Geographic Availability and Access Restrictions

The Service is not offered in every country. We reserve the right, at our sole discretion and without notice, to restrict or deny access to the Service from any country, region, network, or automated client — including by responding to such requests with an HTTP 403 Forbidden error. We currently restrict access from certain regions in order to protect the integrity of the advertising that funds this free Service and to control the infrastructure costs of operating it.

Nothing in these Terms obliges us to make the Service available in any particular territory, and the list of restricted regions may change at any time. Attempting to circumvent a geographic or automated-access restriction — for example by means of a proxy, VPN, or falsified request headers — is a breach of Section 8.

For details of how your IP address is used to apply this restriction, and how briefly it is held, see Section 20 of our Privacy Policy.

15. Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable there, and disputes are resolved in the courts of Ontario.

If you are a consumer living in the European Union or European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, or another country whose mandatory law gives consumers similar protection:

  • this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of the country where you live;
  • you may bring proceedings in the courts of the country where you live, as well as in Ontario, and any proceedings we bring against you will be brought in the courts of the country where you live; and
  • nothing in these Terms limits your right to complain to a consumer-protection or data-protection authority.

16. Privacy

Refer to our Privacy Policy for information on data collection, use, and protection.

17. Severability

If any provision is invalid, the remainder remains in effect.

18. No Waiver

Failure to enforce any right does not constitute a waiver of that right.

19. Professional Advice Disclaimer

Translations are for general informational purposes only. Do not rely on them for legal, medical, financial, or professional decisions.

The same applies to every other category of information on the Service. Nothing on the Service is legal, immigration, visa, admissions, educational, careers, medical or financial advice, and no page, tool, selector or output creates a professional or advisory relationship of any kind. Information about examination, admission, scholarship, visa and immigration requirements is subject to Section 9.3 in particular, which requires you to verify any such requirement directly with the body concerned before relying on it, and Section 9.4, under which we give no guarantee of any examination, academic or immigration outcome and accept no liability for one.

20. Recommendations and Affiliate Links

Some pages — principally How to Learn Chinese, Compared and Recommended Resources — describe third-party products and services and link to them. Those descriptions are our editorial opinion, not advice, and they are not a recommendation that you buy anything. We have not necessarily tested or purchased every item described, and we say so on the pages themselves.

20.1 Affiliate links. Some outbound links — to tutoring services, and to online retailers including Amazon — may be affiliate links, meaning we may receive a commission if you sign up, book a lesson or buy something after following one. This costs you nothing additional. Where such a link is live, a disclosure is displayed on the page above the link, and the link itself is marked rel="sponsored". We are not paid to recommend any particular provider or product, and no assessment, ranking or wording on the Service is determined by whether a commercial arrangement exists.

20.1.1 Amazon Associates. Where the Amazon Associates Programme is active for this Service, the required disclosure — “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases” — is displayed on every page carrying such a link and in the site footer. Amazon links on this Service point to the Amazon.ca marketplace. If no such disclosure is displayed, no affiliate arrangement is in place and those links earn us nothing.

20.1.2 No prices, ratings or availability. We do not display prices, star ratings, review counts or stock status for any third-party product, and you should not infer any of them from what we do show. Cost is described only as a general band. Prices, availability, editions and specifications are set by the retailer and change without notice; only the retailer’s own listing at the moment of purchase is authoritative.

20.2 We do not sell these products. We are not the seller, supplier, distributor or agent of any third-party product or service described on the Service, and we hold no stock. We make no representation or warranty as to their availability, price, quality, suitability, safety, fitness for any purpose or continued existence, and prices and features change without notice — which is why we describe cost as a general band rather than as a figure. Any purchase, subscription or booking you make is a contract between you and that retailer or provider alone, governed entirely by that party’s own terms and privacy policy — including delivery, returns, refunds, warranty and any dispute arising from them, none of which we can assist with. Section 12 (Third‑Party Links and Content) applies in full, and Section 10 (Limitation of Liability) applies to any loss arising from a third-party product or service.

20.3 What we do not do. We do not add tracking of our own to these links, we do not share any personal information with a provider when you click one, and we receive only aggregate, non-identifying reporting from any affiliate programme we participate in. See Section 21 of our Privacy Policy.

20.4 Comparisons are opinions, as of a date. Comparison pages — including How to Learn Chinese, Compared and the head-to-head pages beneath it — describe third-party products and services as we understood them when the page was last checked, and each page says when that was. They are written in good faith and are accurate to the best of our knowledge on that date, but features, course content, free tiers, prices and terms change, often without notice, and we do not warrant that any description is complete, current or accurate. Product and company names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used only to identify the products described; their use implies no affiliation with, or endorsement by, those owners. Before you buy, subscribe or book, rely on the provider’s own current information. Section 20.2 and Section 10 (Limitation of Liability) apply.

21. Contact Information

Questions about these Terms: thepurelanguagecom@gmail.com

By using the Service, you agree to all terms listed above.