google-translate-api-x

A free and unlimited API for Google Translate :dollar: :no_entry_sign: written with compatibility in mind, made to be crossplatform.

Features

• Up-to-Date with all new Google Translate supported languages!
• Auto language detection
• Spelling correction
• Language correction
• Fast and reliable – it uses the same servers that translate.google.com uses
• Wide compatibility through supporting Fetch, Axios, and custom request functions
• Batch many translations into one request with arrays or objects!.

Why this fork?

This fork of the fork vitalets/google-translate-api contains several improvements with the primary change being it is written to support various request methods instead of Got, allowing for greater compatibility outside of Node.js. It also abandons the outdated querystring. Additionally, new languages are more frequently added, and if a new language is not yet in the languages.js list you can now bypass it with the forceFrom and forceTo options. Furthermore, it supports batch translations in 1 request.

Install

npm install google-translate-api-x

Usage

From automatic language detection to English:

const translate = require('google-translate-api-x');
// Or of course
import translate from 'google-translate-api-x';

const res = await translate('Ik spreek Engels', {to: 'en'});

console.log(res.text); //=> I speak English
console.log(res.from.language.iso);  //=> nl

If server returns Response code 403 (Forbidden) try set option client=gtx:

const res = await translate('Ik spreek Engels', { to: 'en', client: 'gtx' }).then(res => { ... });

Please note that maximum text length for single translation call is 5000 characters. In case of longer text you should split it on chunks, see #20.

Autocorrect

From English to Dutch with a typo (autoCorrect):

const res = await translate('I spea Dutch!', { from: 'en', to: 'nl', autoCorrect: true });

console.log(res.from.text.didYouMean); // => false
console.log(res.from.text.autoCorrected); // => true
console.log(res.from.text.value); // => 'I [speak] Dutch!'

console.log(res.text); // => 'Ik spreek Nederlands!'

Did you mean

Even with autocorrect disabled Google Translate will still attempt to correct errors, but will not use the correction for translation. However, it will update res.from.text.value with the corrected text:

const res = await translate('I spea Dutch!', { from: 'en', to: 'nl', autoCorrect: false });

console.log(res.from.text.didYouMean); // => true
console.log(res.from.text.autoCorrected); // => false
console.log(res.from.text.value); // => 'I [speak] Dutch!'

console.log(res.text); // => 'Ik speed Nederlands!'

Array and Object inputs (Batch Requests)

An array or object of inputs can be used to slightly lower the number of individual API calls:

const inputArray = [
  'I speak Dutch!',
  'Dutch is fun!',
  'And so is translating!'
];

const res = await translate(inputArray, { from: 'en', to: 'nl' });

console.log(res[0].text); // => 'Ik spreek Nederlands!'
console.log(res[1].text); // => 'Nederlands is leuk!'
console.log(res[2].text); // => 'En zo ook vertalen!'

and similarly with an object:

const inputObject = {
  name: 'Aidan Welch',
  fact: 'I\'m maintaining this project',
  birthMonth: 'February'
};

const res = await translate(inputObject, { from: 'en', to: 'ja' });

console.log(res.name.text); // => 'エイダンウェルチ'
console.log(res.fact.text); // => '私はこのプロジェクトを維持しています'
console.log(res.birthMonth.text); // => '2月'

If you use auto each input can even be in a different language!

Batch Request with Different Options (Option Query)

In Array and Object requests you can specify from, to, forceFrom, forceTo, and autoCorrect for each individual string to be translated by passing an object with the options set and the string as the text property. Like so:

const inputArray = [
  'I speak Dutch!',
  {text: 'I speak Japanese!', to: 'ja'},
  {text: '¡Hablo checo!', from: 'es', to: 'cs', forceTo: true, autoCorrect: true}
];

const res = await translate(inputArray, { from: 'en', to: 'nl' });

console.log(res[0].text); // => 'Ik spreek Nederlands!'
console.log(res[1].text); // => '私は日本語を話します！'
console.log(res[2].text); // => 'Mluvím česky!'

⚠️ You cannot pass a single translation by itself as an option query, it must either be passed as a string and use the options parameter, or passed wrapped by another array or object. This the translate function cannot differentiate between a batch query object and an option query object.

Using languages not supported in languages.js yet

If you know the ISO code used by Google Translate for a language and know it is supported but this API doesn't support it yet you can force it like so:

const res = await translate('Hello!', { from: 'en', to: 'as', forceTo: true });

console.log(res.text); // => 'নমস্কাৰ!'

forceFrom can be used in the same way.

You can also add languages in the code and use them in the translation:

translate = require('google-translate-api-x');
translate.languages['sr-Latn'] = 'Serbian Latin';

translate('translator', {to: 'sr-Latn'}).then(res => ...);

Proxy

Google Translate has request limits. If too many requests are made, you can either end up with a 429 or a 503 error. You can use proxy to bypass them, however the default requestFunction of fetch does not support it:

const tunnel = require('tunnel');
translate('Ik spreek Engels', {to: 'en'}, {
    agent: tunnel.httpsOverHttp({
    proxy: { 
      host: 'whateverhost',
      proxyAuth: 'user:pass',
      port: '8080',
      headers: {
        'User-Agent': 'Node'
      }
    }
  }
)}).then(res => {
    // do something
});

Does it work from web page context?

It can, sort of. https://translate.google.com does not provide CORS http headers allowing access from other domains. However, this fork is written using Fetch and/or Axios, allowing contexts that don't request CORS access, such as a browser extension background script or React Native.

API

translate(text, [options], [requestOptions])

input

Type: string | string[] | {[key]: string}

The text to be translated.

options

Type: object

from

Type: string Default: auto

The text language. Must be auto or one of the codes/names (not case sensitive) contained in languages.js.

to

Type: string Default: en

The language in which the text should be translated. Must be one of the codes/names (case sensitive!) contained in languages.js.

forceFrom

Type: boolean Default: false

Forces the translate function to use the from option as the iso code, without checking the languages list.

forceTo

Type: boolean Default: false

Forces the translate function to use the to option as the iso code, without checking the languages list.

autoCorrect

Type: boolean Default: false

Autocorrects the inputs, and uses those corrections in the translation.

raw

Type: boolean Default: false

If true, the returned object will have a raw property with the raw response (string) from Google Translate.

requestFunction

Type: string|function Default: fetch|axios

String inputs supported: "fetch" and "axios" for Fetch API and Axios respectively.

Function inputs should takes (url, requestOptions, ?data) and return the body of the request as a string.

Defaults to using fetch if available, axios if not. And if neither are available and requestFunction is not defined as a function will error.

client

Type: string Default: "t"

Query parameter client used in API calls. Can be t|gtx.

tld

Type: string Default: "com"

TLD for Google translate host to be used in API calls: https://translate.google.{tld}.

requestOptions

Type: object

The options used by the requestFunction. The fetchinit and axiosconfig are the default used. requestOptions.headers is automatically converted to the Header class for fetchinit.

Returns an object | object[] | {[key]: object}}:

Matches the structure of the input, so returns just the individual object if just a string is input, an array if an array is input, object with the same keys if an object is input. Regardless of that, each returned value will have this schema:

• text (string) – The translated text.
• from (object)
  • language (object)
    • didYouMean (boolean) - true if the API suggest a correction in the source language
    • iso (string) - The code of the language that the API has recognized in the text
  • text (object)
    • autoCorrected (boolean) – true if the API has auto corrected the text
    • value (string) – The auto corrected text or the text with suggested corrections
    • didYouMean (boolean) – true if the API has suggested corrections to the text and did not autoCorrect
• raw (string) - If options.raw is true, the raw response from Google Translate servers. Otherwise, ''.

Note that res.from.text will only be returned if from.text.autoCorrected or from.text.didYouMean equals to true. In this case, it will have the corrections delimited with brackets ([ ]):

translate('I spea Dutch').then(res => {
    console.log(res.from.text.value);
    //=> I [speak] Dutch
}).catch(err => {
    console.error(err);
});

Otherwise, it will be an empty string ('').

Related projects

• Translateer - uses Puppeteer to access Google Translate API.
• google-translate-api-languages-script - a simple script used to scrape languages for this project.

License

MIT © Matheus Fernandes, forked and maintained by Aidan Welch.