translate-shell.el

translate-shell.el is an unofficial Emacs front-end for translate-shell. translate-shell is command-line translator powered by Google Translate.

Installations

To install manually, make sure this file is saved in a directory in your load-path, and add the line:

(require 'translate-shell)

to your Emacs initialization file.

Usage

You can call translate-shell-brief and translate-shell to get the definition your query word. The result will display in echo area and "Translate Shell" buffer. You might want to bind them to some keys.

Cache

The result returned from trans (the translate-shell command-line program) are stored in the translate-shell-brief-cache and translate-shell-cache variable.

If you want to use cache even after restarting Emacs, you need tt save these two variable yourself. An easy solution is using desktop.el, see below.

Customization

Below is my customization around this package:

(use-package desktop                    ; Save buffers, windows and frames
  :init (desktop-save-mode)
  :config
  (add-to-list 'desktop-globals-to-save 'translate-shell-cache)
  (add-to-list 'desktop-globals-to-save 'translate-shell-brief-cache))

(use-package translate-shell
  :load-path "~/wip/translate-shell.el"
  :bind (("C-c s"   . translate-shell-brief)
         ("C-c S"   . translate-shell))
  :config
  ;; <https://translate.google.com> is blocked in China for no apparent
  ;; reason. No one ever asked my option.
  (setq translate-shell-command "proxychains4 -q trans -t en %s"
        translate-shell-brief-command "proxychains4 -q trans -brief -t zh %s"))