Google Translate API for Node

A Node.js module for working with the Google Translate API.

Automatically handles bulk translations that exceed the Google Translation API query limit.

Installation

Install via npm

npm install google-translate --save

Usage overview

Require module and pass in your API key (get one here).

var googleTranslate = require('google-translate')(apiKey);

String translation:

googleTranslate.translate('My name is Brandon', 'es', function(err, translation) {
  console.log(translation.translatedText);
  // =>  Mi nombre es Brandon
});

Language detection:

googleTranslate.detectLanguage('Gracias', function(err, detection) {
  console.log(detection.language);
  // =>  es
});

API

Callbacks: All methods take a callback as their last parameter. Upon method completion, callbacks are passed an error if exists (otherwise null), followed by a response object or array: callback(err, data).

Bulk translations: Passing an array of strings greater than 2k characters will be result in multiple concurrent asynchronous calls. Once all calls are completed, the response will be parsed, merged, and passed to the callback. The default maximum concurrent requests is 10. You can override this value by passing in a new limit when you pass in your API key: require('google-translate')(apiKey, concurrentLimit)

Translate

Translate one or more strings.

googleTranslate.translate(strings, source, target, callback)

• strings: Required. Can be a string or an array of strings
• source: Optional. Google will autodetect the source locale if not specified. Available languages
• target: Required. Language to translate to. Available languages
• callback: Required.

Example: Translate a string to German (de) and autodetect source language

googleTranslate.translate('Hello', 'de', function(err, translation) {
  console.log(translation);
  // =>  { translatedText: 'Hallo', originalText: 'Hello', detectedSourceLanguage: 'en' }
});

Example: Translate an array of English (en) strings to German (de)

googleTranslate.translate(['Hello', 'Thank you'], 'en', 'de', function(err, translations) {
  console.log(translations);
  // =>  [{ translatedText: 'Hallo', originalText: 'Hello' }, ...]
});

Detect language

Detect language of string or each string in an array.

googleTranslate.detectLanguage(strings, callback)

• strings: Required. Can be a string or an array of strings
• callback: Required.

Example: Detect language from a string

googleTranslate.detectLanguage('Hello', function(err, detection){
  console.log(detection);
  // =>  { language: "en", isReliable: false, confidence: 0.5714286, originalText: "Hello" }
});

Example: Detect language from an array of strings

googleTranslate.detectLanguage(['Hello', 'Danke'], function(err, detections) {
  console.log(detections);
  // =>  [{ language: "en", isReliable: false, confidence: 0.5714286, originalText: "Hello" }, ...]
});

Get supported languages

Retrieve all languages supported by the Google Translate API.

googleTranslate.getSupportedLanguages(target, callback)

• target: Optional. If specified, response will include the name of the language translated to the specified target language
• callback: Required.

Example: Get all supported language codes

googleTranslate.getSupportedLanguages(function(err, languageCodes) {
  console.log(languageCodes);
  // => ['af', 'ar', 'be', 'bg', 'ca', 'cs', ...]
});

Example: Get all supported language codes with language names in German

googleTranslate.getSupportedLanguages('de', function(err, languageCodes) {
  console.log(languageCodes);
  // => [{ language: "en", name: "Englisch" }, ...]
});

Contribute

Forks and pull requests welcome!

TODO

• Make POST instead of GET requests when query is greater than 2k. Limit for POST is 5k
• Add tests
• Design a better way of defining API keys to allow use of multiple Google Translate API keys

Author

Brandon Paton. Email me if you have any questions: [email protected].