Translate chart and diagram labels in an image with Ideogram 4.5

To translate the labels in a chart or diagram image, send the chart as the first input_references image to POST /v1/images with ideogram/ideogram-v4.5 and list each old label with its new one in the prompt. One edit per language costs $0.0375 at low quality on Sume, so four languages are $0.15.

This is a job for an edit model and not for a re-draw, because the bars, lines and data points must stay exactly where they are. A chart image whose bar moved is a wrong chart, which makes this a stricter test than a poster. If you can re-render the chart from data, do that and keep this method for images where the source data is gone.

What does the prompt need?

A mapping, not a description. List every string and its translation, say which parts must stay, and name the language. The more exact the list, the less the model has to guess.

Example: "Translate the text in this chart from English to Spanish using this mapping: 'Revenue' to 'Ingresos', 'Q1' to 'T1', 'Q2' to 'T2', 'Q3' to 'T3', 'Q4' to 'T4'. Keep every bar, line, number, color and position unchanged." Leave numbers out of the mapping so the model has no reason to touch them.

What does it cost per language?

The table is for one chart. Ideogram's list prices are $0.03, $0.06 and $0.22 by quality and Sume bills list x 1.25, flat across sizes.

How do I know the data survived?

Check numbers first, shapes second. Read every value on the axis and every label on a data point against the source, then lay the two images over each other and look for bars whose height changed. A launch-partner page for the model (Morphic, a partner and not the vendor, read 2026-10-05) says it edits and translates text in place and copies unchanged pixels. That is a description of intent; Sume's docs make no promise about charts, so verify each output.

Without an aspect_ratio, an edit keeps the source geometry per the Image API docs, so a 16:9 chart stays 16:9.

Which languages and layouts go wrong first?

Longer words fail before anything else. German and Spanish labels run longer than English ones, so a label that fit above a bar may now collide with its neighbor or wrap. Shorten the translated string, abbreviate months, or rotate the problem label in the source before translating. Check accents and non-Latin scripts letter by letter, since a single wrong mark changes a word.

Small text is the other risk. A 1K image shrinks tiny axis labels; if they are hard to read in the source, request resolution: "2K". The price does not change with size, so that costs nothing extra.

How should I run a set of languages?

Branch each language from the original chart, never from another translation, so errors do not carry across. Give each its own Idempotency-Key such as chart-q3-es. Run the cheapest quality first and re-run only the failures; a re-run at medium is $0.075, still less than one high pass at $0.275. See change text in an image with Ideogram for a single-label walkthrough.

When should I re-draw the chart instead?

If you still have the data, re-render the chart in your plotting tool with translated labels. It is exact, free and repeatable. The edit route is for screenshots, scans and slides where the source data is gone, and for diagrams whose layout was drawn by hand.

A middle path is to translate only the text in the picture and keep the numbers in the original. Whatever you pick, have a person read the translated chart against the source once before it is published, because a wrong label on a correct bar is worse than an untranslated one.