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Google Translate to serve as a command line tool

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google-translate-cli is a 100-line AWK program to let you use Google Translate without a web browser, i.e., from the terminal.

$ translate 成都是个好地方，我每年都要去玩，一定要建设好成都
Chengdu is a good place, and every year I play, we must build Chengdu

Dependencies

All you need is GNU awk (3.1+) to run this program. No Google API Key is required.

Installation

Manually

translate.awk is a runnable AWK script. Feel free to copy it to anywhere in your $PATH and rename it whatever you like.

On Mac OS X and FreeBSD, you may want to change the shebang from:

#!/usr/bin/gawk -f

to:

#!/usr/bin/env gawk -f

Automatically

GNU/Linux, Windows (Cygwin)

$ git clone git://github.com/soimort/google-translate-cli.git
$ cd google-translate-cli/
$ make install

OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD

Firstly, install GNU awk (if necessary). The original BWK awk ("One True AWK") will not work (since it's lack of TCP/IP networking functionality).

$ git clone git://github.com/soimort/google-translate-cli.git
$ cd google-translate-cli/
$ make install

Windows (MinGW)

Firstly, install GNU awk (if necessary),

$ mingw-get install msys-gawk

Then put translate.awk into your $PATH,

$ git clone git://github.com/soimort/google-translate-cli.git
$ cd google-translate-cli/
$ cp translate.awk /bin/trs

Usage

$ trs
Usage: translate {[SL]=[TL]} TEXT|TEXT_FILENAME
       translate {[SL]=[TL1]+[TL2]+...} TEXT|TEXT_FILENAME
       translate TEXT1 TEXT2 ...

TEXT: Source text (The text to be translated)
      Can also be the filename of a plain text file.
  SL: Source language (The language of the source text)
  TL: Target language (The language to translate the source text into)
      Language codes as listed here:
    * http://developers.google.com/translate/v2/using_rest#language-params
      Ignore the code where you want the system to identify it for you.
      Prefix the code with an ampersat @ to show the result phonetically.

Examples

Translate anything of any language into English.

$ trs Weltschmerz
world-weariness

$ trs Weltschmerz コスプレ "Bon appétit." 周星馳
world-weariness
Cosplay
Good appetite.
Stephen Chow

Translate "Hello, world" into Esperanto.

$ trs {=eo} "Hello, world"
Saluton, mondo

Translate "Hello, world" into Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai.

$ trs {=zh+ja+ko+th} "Hello, world"
您好，世界
世界よこんにちは
안녕하세요, 세계
สวัสดีโลก

Translate a Latin phrase into English.

$ trs {la=} "Ego sum qui sum."
I am who I am.

Translate Japanese to French.

$ trs {ja=fr} "愛してる。"
Je t'aime!

Show the phonetics of a Japanese quote and translate it into both English and Traditional Chinese.

$ trs {ja=@ja+en+zh-TW} "あなたは死なないわ、私が守るもの。"
Anata wa shinanai wa, watashi ga mamoru mono. 
What you'll not die, I will protect you.
你會不會死，我會保護你。

Translate an English context text file into Chinese.

e.g. POETRY.txt:

Afternoon Of Circus And Citadel
by Paul Celan

In Brest, before the Fire-Hoops burning,
In the Tent, where Tigers sprang,
there I heard you, Finite, singing,
there I saw you, Mandelstam.

The Sky hung over the Roadstead,
the Gull, hung over the Crane.
The Finite sang there, the Constant –
you, the Gunboat, Baobab.

I hailed the Tricolor
with a Russian Word –
the Lost was Un-Lost,
the Heart Anchored there.

The translation is streamed to standard output.

$ trs {=zh} POETRY.txt
下午，广场和城堡
由保罗·策兰

在布雷斯特，消防篮球燃烧前，
在帐篷里，老虎窜出，
在那里，我听到你的，有限的，唱歌，
在那里，我看到你，曼德尔施塔姆。

挂在天空的锚地，
沙鸥，挂在起重机上。
有限唱在那里，恒 - 
你，的炮舰，猴面包树。

我欢呼三色旗
与俄罗斯词 - 
失落的是联合国忘了，
心锚。

Language Code Reference

See https://developers.google.com/translate/v2/using_rest#language-params.

Important Notes

Additional Tips for Vim Users

Add a line to your ~/.vimrc: (feel free to use any language codes as you like)

set keywordprg=trs\ {ja=@ja+en}

Afterwards you could press Shift-K to see the translation of the word under the cursor.