Translate Shell

Translate Shell (formerly Google Translate CLI) is a command-line translator powered by Google Translate (default), Bing Translator, Yandex.Translate, and Apertium. It gives you easy access to one of these translation engines in your terminal:

$ trans 'Saluton, Mondo!'
Saluton, Mondo!

Hello, World!

Translations of Saluton, Mondo!
[ Esperanto -> English ]
Saluton ,
    Hello,
Mondo !
    World!

By default, translations with detailed explanations are shown. You can also translate the text briefly: (only the most relevant translation will be shown)

$ trans -brief 'Saluton, Mondo!'
Hello, World!

Translate Shell can also be used like an interactive shell; input the text to be translated line by line:

$ trans -shell -brief
> Rien ne réussit comme le succès.
Nothing succeeds like success.
> Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.
What does not kill me makes me stronger.
> Юмор есть остроумие глубокого чувства.
Humor has a deep sense of wit.
> 學而不思則罔，思而不學則殆。
Learning without thought is labor lost, thought without learning is perilous.
> 幸福になるためには、人から愛されるのが一番の近道。
In order to be happy, the best way is to be loved by people.

Prerequisites

System Requirements

Translate Shell is known to work on many POSIX-compliant systems, including but not limited to:

• GNU/Linux
• macOS
• FreeBSD
• Windows (Cygwin or MSYS2)

Dependencies

• GNU Awk (gawk) 4.0 or later
  • This program relies heavily on GNU extensions of the AWK language, which are non-portable for other AWK implementations (e.g. nawk).
  • How to get gawk:
    • gawk comes with all GNU/Linux distributions.
    • On FreeBSD, gawk is available in the ports.
    • On macOS, gawk is available in MacPorts and Homebrew.
• GNU Bash or Zsh
  • You may use Translate Shell from any Unix shell of your choice (bash, zsh, ksh, tcsh, fish, etc.); however, the wrapper script requires either bash or zsh installed.

Recommended Dependencies

These dependencies are optional, but strongly recommended for full functionality:

• curl with OpenSSL support
• GNU FriBidi: an implementation of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (bidi)
  • required for displaying text in Right-to-Left scripts (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew)
• mplayer, mpv, mpg123, or eSpeak
  • required for the Text-to-Speech functionality
• less, more or most
  • required for terminal paging
• rlwrap: a GNU readline wrapper
  • required for readline-style editing and history in the interactive shell
• aspell or hunspell
  • required for spell checking

Environment and Fonts

It is a must to have corresponding fonts for the language(s) / script(s) you wish to display in your terminal. See wiki: Writing Systems and Fonts for more details on scripts and recommended Unicode fonts.

Try It Out!

Start an interactive shell and translate anything you input into your native language: (in bash or zsh)

$ gawk -f <(curl -Ls git.io/translate) -- -shell

(in fish)

$ gawk -f (curl -Ls git.io/translate | psub) -- -shell

Installation

Option #1. Direct Download

Download the self-contained executable and place it into your path. It's everything you need.

$ wget git.io/trans
$ chmod +x ./trans

There is a GPG signature.

Option #2. From A Package Manager

Using Antigen (Recommended for Zsh users)

Add the following line to your .zshrc:

antigen bundle soimort/translate-shell

Using your favorite package manager

See wiki: Distros on how to install from a specific package manager on your distro.

Option #3. From Git (Recommended for seasoned hackers)

$ git clone https://github.com/soimort/translate-shell
$ cd translate-shell/
$ make
$ [sudo] make install

In case you have only zsh but not bash in your system, build with:

$ make TARGET=zsh

The default PREFIX of installation is /usr/local. To install the program to somewhere else (e.g. /usr, ~/.local), use:

$ [sudo] make PREFIX=/usr install

Getting Started by Examples

Translate a Word

From any language to your language

Google Translate can identify the language of the source text automatically, and Translate Shell by default translates the source text into the language of your locale.

$ trans vorto

From any language to one or more specific languages

Translate a word into French:

$ trans :fr word

Translate a word into Chinese and Japanese: (use a plus sign "+" as the delimiter)

$ trans :zh+ja word

Alternatively, equals sign ("=") can be used in place of the colon (":"). Note that in some shells (e.g. zsh), equals signs may be interpreted differently, therefore the argument specifying languages needs to be protected:

$ trans {=zh+ja} word
$ trans '=zh+ja' word

You can also use the -target (-t) option to specify the target language(s):

$ trans -t zh+ja word

From a specific language

Google Translate may wrongly identify the source text as some other language than you expected:

$ trans 手紙

In that case, you need to specify its language explicitly:

$ trans ja: 手紙
$ trans zh: 手紙

You can also use the -source (-s) option to specify the source language:

$ trans -s ja 手紙

Translate Multiple Words or a Phrase

Translate each word alone:

$ trans en:zh word processor

Put words into one argument, and translate them as a whole:

$ trans en:zh "word processor"

Translate a Sentence

Translating a sentence is much the same like translating a phrase; you can just quote the sentence into one argument:

$ trans :zh "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,"
$ trans :zh 'To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,'

It is also possible to translate multi-line sentences:

$ trans :zh "Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
> To the last syllable of recorded time;
> And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
> The way to dusty death."

To avoid punctuation marks (e.g. "!") or other special characters being interpreted by the shell, use single quotes:

$ trans :zh 'Out, out, brief candle!'

There are some cases though, you may still want to use double quotes: (e.g. the sentence contains a single quotation mark "'")

$ trans :zh "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player"

Brief Mode

By default, Translate Shell displays translations in a verbose manner. If you prefer to see only the most relevant translation, there is a brief mode available using the -brief (-b) option:

$ trans -b :fr "Saluton, Mondo"

In brief mode, phonetic notation (if any) is not shown by default. To enable this, put an at sign "@" in front of the language code:

$ trans -b :@ja "Saluton, Mondo"

Dictionary Mode

Google Translate can be used as a dictionary. When translating a word and the target language is the same as the source language, the dictionary entry of the word is shown:

$ trans :en word

To enable dictionary mode no matter whether the source language and the target language are identical, use the -dictionary (-d) option.

$ trans -d fr: mot

Note: Not every language supported by Google Translate has provided dictionary data. See wiki: Languages to find out which language(s) has dictionary support.

Language Identification

Use the -identify (-id) option to identify the language of the text:

$ trans -id 言葉

Text-to-Speech

Use the -play (-p) option to listen to the translation:

$ trans -b -p :ja "Saluton, Mondo"

Use the -speak (-sp) option to listen to the original text:

$ trans -sp "你好，世界"

Terminal Paging

Sometimes the content of translation can be too much for display in one screen. Use the -view (-v) option to view the translation in a terminal pager such as less or more:

$ trans -d -v word

Right-to-Left (RTL) Languages

Right-to-Left (RTL) languages are well supported via GNU FriBidi.

The program will automatically adjust the screen width for padding when displaying right-to-left languages. Alternatively, you may use the -width (-w) option to specify the screen width:

$ trans -b -w 40 :he "Saluton, Mondo"

See wiki: Languages to find out which language(s) uses a Right-to-Left writing system.

Pipeline, Input and Output

If no source text is given in command-line arguments, the program will read from standard input, or from the file specified by the -input (-i) option:

$ echo "Saluton, Mondo" | trans -b :fr
$ trans -b -i input.txt :fr

Translations are written to standard output, or to the file specified by the -output (-o) option:

$ echo "Saluton, Mondo" | trans -b -o output.txt :fr

Translate a File

Instead of using the -input option, a file URI scheme (file:// followed by the file name) can be used as a command-line argument:

$ trans :fr file://input.txt

Note: Brief mode is used when translating from file URI schemes.

Translate a Web Page

To translate a web page, an http(s) URI scheme can be used as an argument:

$ trans :fr http://www.w3.org/

A browser session will open for viewing the translation (via Google Translate's web interface). To specify your web browser of choice, use the -browser option:

$ trans -browser firefox :fr http://www.w3.org/

Language Details

Use the -list (-L) option to view details of one or more languages:

$ trans -L fr
$ trans -L de+en

Some basic information of the language will be displayed: its English name and endonym (language name in the language itself), language family, writing system, canonical Google Translate code and ISO 639-3 code.

Interactive Translate Shell (REPL)

Start an interactive shell using the -shell (or -interactive, -I) option:

$ trans -shell

You may specify the source language and the target language(s) before starting an interactive shell:

$ trans -shell en:fr

You may also change these settings during an interactive session. See wiki: REPL for more advanced usage of the interactive Translate Shell.

Usage

For more details on command-line options, see the man page trans(1) or use trans -M in a terminal.

Usage:  trans [OPTIONS] [SOURCE]:[TARGETS] [TEXT]...

Information options:
    -V, -version
        Print version and exit.
    -H, -help
        Print help message and exit.
    -M, -man
        Show man page and exit.
    -T, -reference
        Print reference table of languages and exit.
    -R, -reference-english
        Print reference table of languages (in English names) and exit.
    -L CODES, -list CODES
        Print details of languages and exit.
    -S, -list-engines
        List available translation engines and exit.
    -U, -upgrade
        Check for upgrade of this program.

Translator options:
    -e ENGINE, -engine ENGINE
        Specify the translation engine to use.

Display options:
    -verbose
        Verbose mode. (default)
    -b, -brief
        Brief mode.
    -d, -dictionary
        Dictionary mode.
    -identify
        Language identification.
    -show-original Y/n
        Show original text or not.
    -show-original-phonetics Y/n
        Show phonetic notation of original text or not.
    -show-translation Y/n
        Show translation or not.
    -show-translation-phonetics Y/n
        Show phonetic notation of translation or not.
    -show-prompt-message Y/n
        Show prompt message or not.
    -show-languages Y/n
        Show source and target languages or not.
    -show-original-dictionary y/N
        Show dictionary entry of original text or not.
    -show-dictionary Y/n
        Show dictionary entry of translation or not.
    -show-alternatives Y/n
        Show alternative translations or not.
    -w NUM, -width NUM
        Specify the screen width for padding.
    -indent NUM
        Specify the size of indent (number of spaces).
    -theme FILENAME
        Specify the theme to use.
    -no-theme
        Do not use any other theme than default.
    -no-ansi
        Do not use ANSI escape codes.
    -no-autocorrect
        Do not autocorrect. (if defaulted by the translation engine)
    -no-bidi
        Do not convert bidirectional texts.
    -no-warn
        Do not write warning messages to stderr.
    -dump
        Print raw API response instead.

Audio options:
    -p, -play
        Listen to the translation.
    -speak
        Listen to the original text.
    -n VOICE, -narrator VOICE
        Specify the narrator, and listen to the translation.
    -player PROGRAM
        Specify the audio player to use, and listen to the translation.
    -no-play
        Do not listen to the translation.
    -no-translate
        Do not translate anything when using -speak.
    -download-audio
        Download the audio to the current directory.
    -download-audio-as FILENAME
        Download the audio to the specified file.

Terminal paging and browsing options:
    -v, -view
        View the translation in a terminal pager.
    -pager PROGRAM
        Specify the terminal pager to use, and view the translation.
    -no-view
        Do not view the translation in a terminal pager.
    -browser PROGRAM
        Specify the web browser to use.

Networking options:
    -x HOST:PORT, -proxy HOST:PORT
        Use HTTP proxy on given port.
    -u STRING, -user-agent STRING
        Specify the User-Agent to identify as.

Interactive shell options:
    -I, -interactive, -shell
        Start an interactive shell.
    -E, -emacs
        Start the GNU Emacs front-end for an interactive shell.
    -no-rlwrap
        Do not invoke rlwrap when starting an interactive shell.

I/O options:
    -i FILENAME, -input FILENAME
        Specify the input file.
    -o FILENAME, -output FILENAME
        Specify the output file.

Language preference options:
    -l CODE, -hl CODE, -lang CODE
        Specify your home language.
    -s CODE, -sl CODE, -source CODE, -from CODE
        Specify the source language.
    -t CODES, -tl CODE, -target CODES, -to CODES
        Specify the target language(s), joined by '+'.

Other options:
    -no-init
        Do not load any initialization script.

See the man page trans(1) for more information.

Code List

Use trans -R or trans -T to view the reference table in a terminal.

For more details on languages and corresponding codes, see wiki: Languages.

Language	Code	Language	Code	Language	Code
Afrikaans Afrikaans	af	Hebrew עִבְרִית	he	Portuguese Português	pt
Albanian Shqip	sq	Hill Mari Кырык мары	mrj	Punjabi ਪੰਜਾਬੀ	pa
Amharic አማርኛ	am	Hindi हिन्दी	hi	Querétaro Otomi Hñąñho	otq
Arabic العربية	ar	Hmong Hmoob	hmn	Romanian Română	ro
Armenian Հայերեն	hy	Hmong Daw Hmoob Daw	mww	Russian Русский	ru
Azerbaijani Azərbaycanca	az	Hungarian Magyar	hu	Samoan Gagana Sāmoa	sm
Bashkir башҡорт теле	ba	Icelandic Íslenska	is	Scots Gaelic Gàidhlig	gd
Basque Euskara	eu	Igbo Igbo	ig	Serbian (Cyrillic) српски	sr-Cyrl
Belarusian беларуская	be	Indonesian Bahasa Indonesia	id	Serbian (Latin) srpski	sr-Latn
Bengali বাংলা	bn	Irish Gaeilge	ga	Sesotho Sesotho	st
Bosnian Bosanski	bs	Italian Italiano	it	Shona chiShona	sn
Bulgarian български	bg	Japanese 日本語	ja	Sindhi سنڌي	sd
Cantonese 粵語	yue	Javanese Basa Jawa	jv	Sinhala සිංහල	si
Catalan Català	ca	Kannada ಕನ್ನಡ	kn	Slovak Slovenčina	sk
Cebuano Cebuano	ceb	Kazakh Қазақ тілі	kk	Slovenian Slovenščina	sl
Chichewa Nyanja	ny	Khmer ភាសាខ្មែរ	km	Somali Soomaali	so
Chinese Simplified 简体中文	zh-CN	Klingon tlhIngan Hol	tlh	Spanish Español	es
Chinese Traditional 正體中文	zh-TW	Klingon (pIqaD)  	tlh-Qaak	Sundanese Basa Sunda	su
Corsican Corsu	co	Korean 한국어	ko	Swahili Kiswahili	sw
Croatian Hrvatski	hr	Kurdish Kurdî	ku	Swedish Svenska	sv
Czech Čeština	cs	Kyrgyz Кыргызча	ky	Tahitian Reo Tahiti	ty
Danish Dansk	da	Lao ລາວ	lo	Tajik Тоҷикӣ	tg
Dutch Nederlands	nl	Latin Latina	la	Tamil தமிழ்	ta
Eastern Mari Олык марий	mhr	Latvian Latviešu	lv	Tatar татарча	tt
Emoji Emoji	emj	Lithuanian Lietuvių	lt	Telugu తెలుగు	te
English English	en	Luxembourgish Lëtzebuergesch	lb	Thai ไทย	th
Esperanto Esperanto	eo	Macedonian Македонски	mk	Tongan Lea faka-Tonga	to
Estonian Eesti	et	Malagasy Malagasy	mg	Turkish Türkçe	tr
Fijian Vosa Vakaviti	fj	Malay Bahasa Melayu	ms	Udmurt удмурт	udm
Filipino Tagalog	tl	Malayalam മലയാളം	ml	Ukrainian Українська	uk
Finnish Suomi	fi	Maltese Malti	mt	Urdu اُردُو	ur
French Français	fr	Maori Māori	mi	Uzbek Oʻzbek tili	uz
Frisian Frysk	fy	Marathi मराठी	mr	Vietnamese Tiếng Việt	vi
Galician Galego	gl	Mongolian Монгол	mn	Welsh Cymraeg	cy
Georgian ქართული	ka	Myanmar မြန်မာစာ	my	Xhosa isiXhosa	xh
German Deutsch	de	Nepali नेपाली	ne	Yiddish ייִדיש	yi
Greek Ελληνικά	el	Norwegian Norsk	no	Yoruba Yorùbá	yo
Gujarati ગુજરાતી	gu	Papiamento Papiamentu	pap	Yucatec Maya Màaya T'àan	yua
Haitian Creole Kreyòl Ayisyen	ht	Pashto پښتو	ps	Zulu isiZulu	zu
Hausa Hausa	ha	Persian فارسی	fa
Hawaiian ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi	haw	Polish Polski	pl

Wiki

Lists of all languages, writing systems and fonts for reference:

• Languages
• Writing Systems and Fonts

The following pages demonstrate the advanced usage of Translate Shell:

• REPL
• Text Editor Integration
• Narrator Selection
• Configuration
• Themes
• AppleScript

Find out whether your Linux distribution has included Translate Shell in its official repository. If not, contribute one:

• Distros

Frequently Asked Questions, historical stuff, AWK coding style, etc.:

• FAQ
• History
• AWK Style Guide

Reporting Bugs / Contributing

Please review the guidelines for contributing before reporting an issue or sending a pull request.

Licensing

This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain. See LICENSE and WAIVER for details.