translate {-? | -v | --list-services}

translate [-s services] [-f lang] [-t lang] {-l}

translate [-s services] [-f lang] [-t lang] {http_url | https_url}

translate [-s services] [-f lang] [-t lang] [--max-threads=n] [--max-retries=n] [file]

translate translates a text or web page.

If the first synopsis form is used, translate prints a quick help, the version information or the list of available translation services to standard output.

If the second synopsis form is used, translate prints the list of available language pairs to standard output.

If the third synopsis form is used, translate translates the web page pointed to by http_url or https_url, and prints the URL of the translated web page to standard output (http_url must be a string starting with http://, and https_url must be a string starting with https://).

If the fourth synopsis form is used, translate translates the text contained in file, and prints the translation to standard output (if file is omitted or given as a single dash, standard input is used instead).

-?, --help

Prints a quick help to standard output.

-v, --version

Prints version information to standard output.

--list-services

Lists the available translation services.

-s services, --services=services

Specifies the translation services to use. The services argument must be a comma-separated list of service names (default value: all the available services).

The list of services determines the available language pairs. The order of the list is important, as libtranslate iterates over the list until the requested translation can be performed.

-l, --list-pairs

Lists the available language pairs.

The -f and -t options can be used to specify a source and/or destination language filter. If neither -f nor -t is specified, all the pairs are listed.

-f lang, --from=lang

Specifies the source language of a translation. The lang argument must be a RFC 3066 language tag such as en or zh-TW (default value: see Language Selection).

-t lang, --to=lang

Specifies the destination language of a translation. The lang argument must be a RFC 3066 language tag such as en or zh-TW (default value: see Language Selection).

--max-threads=n

Specifies the maximum number of concurrent threads to use for translating text (default value: 8).

--max-retries=n

Specifies the maximum number of retries per text chunk (default value: 3).

Definitions: in this section, default_from is defined as the contents of the environment variable TRANSLATE_DEFAULT_FROM, or, if that variable is not set, en; default_to is defined as the contents of the environment variable TRANSLATE_DEFAULT_TO, or, if that variable is not set, fr.

If the source language is not specified, it defaults to default_from, or, if the destination language is equal to default_from, default_to.

If the destination language is not specified, it defaults to default_to, or, if the source language is equal to default_to, default_from.

Internally, libtranslate uses the UTF-8 encoding.

If the input text is not encoded in UTF-8, translate assumes it is encoded in the character set of the current locale, and attempts to convert it to UTF-8. If the conversion fails, translate exits with an error.

The output text is converted to the character set of the current locale before printing.

In the following examples, it is assumed that TRANSLATE_DEFAULT_FROM is set to es and that TRANSLATE_DEFAULT_TO is set to de.

translate -f fr -l

Lists all the available language pairs where the source language is French.

translate document1

Translates the contents of the file document1 from Spanish to German and prints the result to standard output.

translate -s babelfish,freetranslation document1

Translates the contents of the file document1 from Spanish to German, only using the Babel Fish and FreeTranslation services, and prints the result to standard output.

translate -f de document1

Translates the contents of the file document1 from German to Spanish and prints the result to standard output.

echo "Le problème est résolu." | translate -f fr -t en

Translates the text given on standard input from French to English and prints the result to standard output.

translate -t en http://www.freebsd.org/es/index.html

Translates the web page pointed to by http://www.freebsd.org/es/index.html from Spanish to English and prints an URL pointing to the result to standard output.

The translate utility exits with a status of 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

The following environment variables affect the execution of translate:

HTTP_PROXY

The URL of the proxy to use for HTTP requests.

http_proxy

Same as HTTP_PROXY, for compatibility.

TRANSLATE_DEFAULT_FROM

The default source language (see Language Selection).

TRANSLATE_DEFAULT_TO

The default destination language (see Language Selection).

The libtranslate Reference Manual