Document Translation using Google

Amongst many of google's incredible services, one is "document translation". Google provides a web interface to translate a document. But the constraint is, the translated document will be shown as a web-page and you can not get the translated document in your original binary format. This backlog prompts me to develop a desktop application which will exploit Google's translation power to translate a document, right from your desktop. Currently this software supports the below file formats:

• doc
• xls
• ppt
• docx
• xlsx
• pptx
• txt

The software is licensed under gnu lesser gpl and hosted in google codes. You can check out the source from google code svn.Compiled binaries are available from downloads

Google Document translator is written in java and requires jre to run. This project uses

• apache poi to handle microsoft office documents
• google-api-translate-java to call google language api from a java client
• dom4j for xml parsing
• jaxen for xpath
• itext for pdf support ( in Progress )

The software has a unique feature "HTTP Translator". Google provides api for language translation.The service is free but it has been deprecated. Google will stop the service completely after December 1st 2011. This deprecated api is replaced by a newer version, google translate api v2, equally powerful as its older counterpart. But, due to economic burden caused by extensive abuse ( as goolge says ) , they have made it as a paid service. So, I have come out with this tricky solution, "HTTP Translator". The translator uses simple http get post request and parse the response to translate a input text. As long as google continues their translation website, hope this http translator will work smoothly.