6th May 2013, 1 min read

John Raff / Dmitry Sandalov: Access Google translate from a terminal

See an article by a guy named johnraff, Access Google translate from a terminal (dead link), or reblogged by Dmitry Sandalov here Access Google translate from a terminal.

I copy the shell script named translate here:

#!/bin/bash
# access translate.google.com from terminal
 
help='translate <text> [[<source language>] <target language>]
if target missing, use DEFAULT_TARGET_LANG
if source missing, use auto'
 
# adjust to taste
DEFAULT_TARGET_LANG=en
 
if [[ $1 = -h || $1 = --help ]]
then
    echo "$help"
    exit
fi
 
if [[ $3 ]]; then
    source="$2"
    target="$3"
elif [[ $2 ]]; then
    source=auto
    target="$2"
else
    source=auto
    target="$DEFAULT_TARGET_LANG"
fi
 
result=$(curl -s -i --user-agent "" -d "sl=$source" -d "tl=$target" --data-urlencode "text=$1" http://translate.google.com)
encoding=$(awk '/Content-Type: .* charset=/ {sub(/^.*charset=["'\'']?/,""); sub(/[ "'\''].*$/,""); print}' <<<"$result")
#iconv -f $encoding <<<"$result" | awk 'BEGIN {RS="<div"};/<span[^>]* id=["'\'']?result_box["'\'']?/ {sub(/^.*id=["'\'']?result_box["'\'']?(>| [^>]*>)([ \n\t]*<[^>]*>)*/,"");sub(/<.*$/,"");print}' | html2text -utf8
iconv -f $encoding <<<"$result" |  awk 'BEGIN {RS="</div>"};/<span[^>]* id=["'\'']?result_box["'\'']?/' | html2text -utf8
exit

Works great.

Here are some examples:

translate Weg
Way

translate "Ich gehe nach Hause"
I'm going home

Added 05-Aug-2025: Script doesn't work anymore.