Google translate workflow

[ErfahrungenCOM]

Thanks Florian for the Workflow. Thank you kopischke for the bug fixes. You guys are awesome!

[maxbmx]

This is what I was looking for. I can stop disturb David Ferguson to make such one.

Maciej, Did you resolve problem with polish chars (exemple: Łąka)

[mcskrzypczak]

Maciej, Did you resolve problem with polish chars (exemple: Łąka)

Well, it just works for me.

 

[bonka]

Although i this workflow, I wonder if it is possible to translate bigger chunks of text? It seems like the first period sign "." terminates the translation. I do a lot of research in academic papers for my master thesis, and use Alfred to do a quick translation of chunks of text (typically a paragraph or three) that I use as citations in my paper. I have successfully made it work by removing the punctuation manually before pasting it into this wf, but that removes the beauty of it.

 

Suggestions?

 

Edit: I fidgeted around with periods a little. Not only are periods escaping the query, but the result from a "I say hello." returns (the translated equivalent of) "I say hello ." - mind the gap between hello and the period. Would love it if someone smarter than me would have a look at this!

Edited March 17, 2015 by bonka

[deanishe]

What actually happens is that Google returns each sentence as a separate result, but the workflow throws away all but the first.
 
To get multi-sentence results, open the workflow in Finder and edit the translate script in it to read as follows. This will show all the sentences in a translation. Because Alfred can't show much text in its results, I've added copy text and large type. Hit CMD+C on a result to copy the translation to the clipboard and CMD+L to show the full translation in Alfred's large type window.

# Set locale and normalize unicode composition for international support.
export LC_CTYPE="UTF-8"
query="$(echo "${@:3}" | iconv -s -f UTF-8-Mac -t UTF-8)"

# Retrieve and parse Google Translate answer.
response="$(curl -G --data-urlencode "text=$query" --data 'client=p' --data 'sl=auto' --data "tl=$1" --silent --user-agent 'Mozilla/5.0' 'http://translate.google.com/translate_a/t' | python -c 'import sys, json; print("".join([d.get("trans", "<UNTRANSLATED>") for d in json.loads(sys.stdin.read())["sentences"]]).encode("utf-8"))')"
[[ -z "$response" ]] && translation="No translation found" || translation="$response"

# Write feedback.
echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><items>
  <item uid="translation">
	<title><![CDATA['"$translation"']]></title>
	<arg><![CDATA['"$translation"']]></arg>
	<text type="copy"><![CDATA['"$translation"']]></text>
	<text type="largetype"><![CDATA['"$translation"']]></text>
	<icon>icon.png</icon>
	<subtitle>”'"$query"'” in '$2'.</subtitle>
  </item>
</items>'

[rice.shawn]

 

What actually happens is that Google returns each sentence as a separate result, but the workflow throws away all but the first.

 

You know, I noticed this when I was writing my version of this workflow, but I lost track / got distracted and forgot to continue looking into it. I should go fix mine.

[deanishe]

The important bit is setting the client URL parameter to something other than t. That way you get valid, comprehensible JSON instead of some weird crap.

[rice.shawn]

The important bit is setting the client URL parameter to something other than t. That way you get valid, comprehensible JSON instead of some weird crap.

 

I was just working on this, and, well, I took the other route to make the json valid. Basically, it seems that for a null value, Google just sends back nothing, so I added a while loop to look for two commas in a row and replace them with `,null,`. But your solution seems much, much better.

[deanishe]

Yeah, I spent some time staring at the weird output and wasn't going to bother trying to figure it out. Thankfully, a Stack Overflow thread turned up the above nugget.

Edited March 17, 2015 by deanishe

[rice.shawn]

Well, I just fixed mine. Thanks for the leads.

[bonka]

Multiple sentences - check. 

Correct period behaviour - check. 

 

Thanks a lot, deanishe!

[deanishe]

Glad I could help.

[bonka]

Did the workflow just break?

 

Response from any request is: "No translation found"

[Teodin]

The creator of another translate workflow just added this to his readme:

 

 

 

It seems like Google closed the open API endpoints for it's translation services. Therefore this Workflow does not work anymore. It's sad, but there not much I can do.

https://github.com/thomashempel/AlfredGoogleTranslateWorkflow

 

If this is true, it would be very, very sad… this is one of my most used workflows.

[malinich]

I found the same "No translation found" this morning, Too bad. It was a useful workflow 

[bonka]

Oh my god. That is so lame. Lets start a Facebook page.

 

Edit: Is this API pricing page on Google Cloud Services new?

Edited April 8, 2015 by bonka

[rice.shawn]

Oh my god. That is so lame. Lets start a Facebook page.

 

Edit: Is this API pricing page on Google Cloud Services new?

 

I don't think it is new. The endpoint that this (and my) workflow used was unofficial, and the paid translation API has been around for quite a while. So, these just used a sort of backdoor that Google had left open. Now, the URL leads to a redirect captcha challenge that redirects nowhere.

 

It's a pity that they closed the endpoint, but we can't be too mad because it was never official to begin with.

[bonka]

I see :/ Nevertheless, I reserve the right to be mad because it was such a great service. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

[Florian]

For single word translation, wordreference was always better anyway: http://www.wordreference.com/docs/api.aspx Anyone feels like making a workflow for it?

 

For sentences and all, it'd be really cool to find an alternative too, this was way useful! Any ideas guys?

[vanderholm]

catastrophic! I was relying very much on these workflows. What to do?

[rice.shawn]

It looks like Translate Shell (which used the same path) found a new way to use it. It should easily be adaptable. So this means that they didn't close it; they just changed it....

[rice.shawn]

Okay. It can work. I just updated mine.

 

The endpoint has changed slightly, so the URL needs to be corrected. Also, the trick to get good JSON that Dean pointed out a few posts back no longer works, so you have to scrub the data. Next, the keys seem to have changed in that they're all just numeric arrays.

 

Here's what I did (it is truly an inelegant hack, but I just wanted to get it working again), so you can crib from it to get this one working again.

foreach ( $languages as $code => $name ) :
	$query =  "http://translate.google.com/translate_a/single?client=json&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8";
	$query .= "&dt=bd&dt=ex&dt=ld&dt=md&dt=qca&dt=rw&dt=rm&dt=ss&dt=t&dt=at";
	$query .= "&q=" . urlencode( $text );
	$query .= "&hl=en&sl=auto&";
	$query .= "tl=" . $code;

	$trans = file_get_contents( $query );
	while ( false !== strpos( $trans, '[,' ) ) :
		$trans = str_replace( '[,', '[null,', $trans );
	endwhile;
	while ( false !== strpos( $trans, ',,' ) ) :
		$trans = str_replace( ',,', ',null,', $trans );
	endwhile;
  $trans = json_decode( $trans, true );
	$string = '';
	foreach ( $trans[0] as $t ) :
		$string .= trim( $t[0] ) . ' ';
	endforeach;
	$w->result( '', $string, $string, "$name: $text", "icons/$code.png", 'yes', '' );
endforeach;

(Note: mine lets you use multiple languages at once, so that's why there is the big foreach loop. I haven't updated this to use Alphred yet, so it still uses David's Workflows library)

 

The while loops scrub the response into something that json_decode can read.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Shawn Rice

[vanderholm]

wonderful!

 

can anyone update the workflow (well out of my range as a 'programmer') or give a hint as to where to change the existing one (in the translate file or in the script filter)?

 

 

NB: thomashempel also got his working again: https://github.com/thomashempel/AlfredGoogleTranslateWorkflow/blob/master/README.md

[ErfahrungenCOM]

I would also be interested in an updated workflow. Thanks guys!

[vanderholm]

from what I gather the state of this workflow is this workflow, not counting the most recent fix:

 

https://github.com/kopischke/alfred-workflows/raw/master/Google%20Translate.alfredworkflow

 

with this substitution in the 'translate' file:

 

http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/120-google-translate-workflow/?p=35081

 

what's next?

 

(I use a modified version of the workflow for single language translations (da>en) with a hotkey and instant paste, perhaps I should just hack mr. Rice' in the same way workflow and let this one deprecate)