Twitter Translate: Automatically convert tweets to your language
I am having a lot of fun with the AJAX Language API. Last week I talked about the translation bookmarklet that lets you translate anything that you select in the browser.
This time, I whipped up Twitter Translate, which watches the tweets in the page, and if the content isn’t your native tongue automatically converts it and replaces it inline. It then adds a mini logo with “translated from …” which you can click on to see the original text:
It is probably easiest to quickly see it in action:
I think that I am so excited about this API as it is a vertical service that you can just use for free. Think back on how you would be able to integrate language into your applications in the past. You would either:
- Have to work on the discipline yourself, which is crazy if it isn’t your core business
- Find a vendor that has some product that you can use, all of which are very expensive.
Now, we can use this service for free, and the best part? It will keep getting better behind the scenes without us having to do a thing!
April 29th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Funny how the tweets in the video are so badly translated…
“Skype m’a planté et Y! est saccadé je me couche bonne nuit à tous !!” approximately means “Skype is down and Y! lags I go to bed good night everybody !!” and “Il n’y a que moi qui ait remarqué le petit crocodile de mary tabarly ?” translates (module the typo: à => a) to “Am I the only one to have noticed mary tabarly’s small crocodile ?”.
Did you really get it from “Skype me planted and Y! I was choppy layer good night all!” and “There is a mine that had noticed the little crocodile tabarly mary?” ? ;-)
April 30th, 2008 at 8:03 am
I don’t see a link to the script, and following the link to the google hosted code page doesn’t show any downloads there either… Where is the GM script available at?
April 30th, 2008 at 8:41 am
FWIW, you didn’t have a link to it on your My Code page either, but following the naming/link structure of your other scripts, it was easy enough to find.. though I don’t expect that is the way you want it done…
August 25th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
And I’m totally new to this site, so I don’t know the naming/link structure. How do I download a copy of this? I will give you mad props because I’ve been talking about this for so long…this is so needed.
March 16th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Yes, it’s oddly hard to get to. Visit http://code.google.com/p/good-translations/source/browse/trunk/twitter-translate/twitter-translate.user.js?spec=svn2 and click on “view raw file”. You will need Greasemonkey ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748 ) installed first.
April 7th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Very cool! I’ve created a way to do just simple translation of a tweet by replying to my twitter bot (it uses Google Translate API and PHP). Check out tweetrans.com for usage, but you basically just reply to @tweetrans with a code (like “2es” for “translate this to Spanish”…all the codes are international standards and listed on the site). Maybe someone will find this fun or useful too? :)
April 15th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
This doesn’t work at all… I am trying to translate a twitter feed from Norwegian to English.
June 27th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Nice job.
Here is what I did with Google AJAX API. A fully featured iPhone twitter client which does the same thing as you did but only as a native iPhone application.
Check it out @ http://tidbit.techievarta.com/tag/twitterworld/ or in iTunes
July 1st, 2009 at 9:36 pm
That’s cool. Works nice. Now how about putting some of this sevrer side and making this service available to everyone through a browser (whether desktop or mobile).
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:19 pm
An Israeli startup has a new service, called Twitrans, that can break the language barrier between America and billions of Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Russian, and even Arabic speakers.
Developed by the company, One Hour Translation, Twitrans lets you write your message in English, send it to the company for professional translation, and then post it up on your Twitter page.
February 27th, 2010 at 2:29 am
Could TwitterTranslate be made to work with Twitter search results?
February 28th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Love it! Finding this super helpful with the Chile earthquake. I wanted it to do more so I updated the script to work with search results and to work as you paginate through more tweets. I submitted the changes to the google code page, and linked to my tweaked version here: http://dsldsl.tumblr.com/post/415927258/auto-translate-twitter-search-results-greasemonkey
July 12th, 2010 at 9:19 am
Hi you should check out the new chrome extension that will translate your facebook and twitter feeds automatically: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/giljlmclogpacbccpelmggfcjnickhhf