Google translate from command line

[mag_dex]

Hi,

I found the Google translate is pretty cool. I would like to use it to translate some text from my computer in batch(in script).

Do you know any way that I could use it easily from shell?

[amylase]

Hi mag_dex

Interesting idea. I never tried it myself but if I were to, my starting point might be using a commandline driven textbased web browser such as Lynx maybe (?)

http://lynx.isc.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)

[unutbu]

Save this in ~/bin/translate

#!/usr/bin/env python
from urllib2 import urlopen
from urllib import urlencode
import sys

# The google translate API can be found here: 
# http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlanguage/documentation/#Examples

lang1=sys.argv[1]
lang2=sys.argv[2]
langpair='%s|%s'%(lang1,lang2)
text=' '.join(sys.argv[3:])
base_url='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/language/translate?'
params=urlencode( (('v',1.0),
                   ('q',text),
                   ('langpair',langpair),) )
url=base_url+params
content=urlopen(url).read()
start_idx=content.find('"translatedText":"')+18
translation=content[start_idx:]
end_idx=translation.find('"}, "')
translation=translation[:end_idx]
print translation 

Make it executable:

chmod +x ~/bin/translate

Use it like this:

translate en es where are you

en (English) is the source language
es (Spanish) is the target language
"where are you" is the text to be translated

Output:

dónde estás

[mag_dex]

Thanks! The code is great and works!

[unutbu]

I'm glad you like it

[SoulSmasher]

excellent! works perfect
i'm not a python guru, but know php. in php, to parse that data, you generally use json_decode.
i googled a bit, and found this:
http://docs.python.org/library/json.html
but wouldn' that be better if this is used?
just my two cents though

Thanks again for the great script!

[unutbu]

Thank you very much for the feedback and information, SoulSmasher.
I didn't know about JSON until now.

Happily, it appears to be quite easy to use json. Below is an updated version of the script.

To use the script with Ubuntu, you'll need to have the python-json package installed. (It requires about 160 KiB to install).

#!/usr/bin/env python
from urllib2 import urlopen
from urllib import urlencode
import sys
try:
    import json
except ImportError:
    print('You need to install the python-json package')
    sys.exit(1)

# The google translate API can be found here: 
# http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlanguage/documentation/#Examples

lang1=sys.argv[1]
lang2=sys.argv[2]
langpair='%s|%s'%(lang1,lang2)
text=' '.join(sys.argv[3:])
base_url='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/language/translate?'
params=urlencode( (('v',1.0),
                   ('q',text),
                   ('langpair',langpair),) )
url=base_url+params
content=urlopen(url).read()
try:
    trans_dict=json.loads(content)
except AttributeError:
    trans_dict=json.read(content)
print(trans_dict['responseData']['translatedText']) 

[SoulSmasher]

Hi, thanks for the quick reply unutbu
I tried your new code, as far as i can say it works flawlessly
thank you again for the script, saves me from huge pain

[lautarop]

works like a charm
thanks mate

[SoulSmasher]

i found a bug.
when there's ' character inside the text, it won't translate

i.e: try this

translate fr en n'est-ce pas

nothing shows and i've to close it with ctrl+c combination