Many of us speak more than one language. You could also be a translator. Whatever your situation, the fact is that translation tools are used regularly by many. In any case, most of us will probably have to use one at some point in our lives. When you think of Linux, you may not immediately think of large translation applications. However, there are solid language translators for Linux, some of which are discussed here.
1. Translate Shell
Translate Shell is a command line tool that uses Google Translate, Apertium, Yandex.Translate and Apertium engines.
There are a few options for installing Translate Shell. You can install from the terminal with the following distributions.
Distributions based on Debian and Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install translate-shell
Archiving of distributions:
sudo pacman -S translate-shell
Felt:
sudo dnf install translate-shell
Alternatively, you can download and install Translate Shell directly from its Git repository:
git clone https://github.com/soimort/translate-shell cd translate-shell/ make sudo make install
Using Translate Shell
Translate Shell translated into English by default. To translate a word into another language into English:
For example, if you translate the Spanish word “bueno” into English, you will receive English translations such as “good”.
To translate an entire sentence, use trans and surround the sentence you want to translate with quotes. For example:
trans "comment t'appeles tu"
You can also translate the contents of a file:
Replace “filepath” above with the full path of your file. If you want to find the language codes for the different languages, simply run:
Knowing the language codes is important for translating words into specified languages. This is sometimes necessary because you will want to translate into several languages. For example, if you want to translate “technology” into French and Spanish, you must type the following command:
trans -t fr+es technology
If you wish to translate into several languages, you will use the following syntax:
trans -t fr+es "Make technology easier"
You may also need to specify the language from which you are translating. You can do it with the ta option. This is necessary because translation engines do not always identify the source language correctly. For example, if you want to translate “vert” from French to English, you should type:
2. Crow Translate
Crow Translate is a language translator for Linux that has both a graphical interface and a command line interface. It uses the translation engines of Google Translate, Yandex Translate and Bing Translator.
Crow Translate installation
Crow Translate is available for Windows and Linux. All necessary files are available on GitHub. This tutorial explains how to complete the installation on Ubuntu, Debian and Linux Mint.
First, you will need to install certain dependencies:
sudo apt install libqt5multimedia5 libqt5multimedia5-plugins libqt5multimediagsttools5 libqt5multimediawidgets5 libqt5qml5 libqt5quick5 qtgstreamer-plugins-qt5
Next, you will need to download the GitHub .deb file to your Downloads folder.
Run the code below. Make sure to replace “filename” with the name of the .deb file you downloaded.
cd Downloads sudo dpkg -i filename
If you encounter errors, run:
sudo apt --fix-broken install
After completing this installation process, you will be able to run Crow Translate.
Using Crow Translate
Crow Translate supports 117 languages. They are visible in the application.
Choose the translation engine you want to use at the bottom right of the screen. It is quite simple to use the graphical interface and is able to automatically detect the language you want to translate. It also allows you to specify the languages you translate in case the translation engine doesn’t recognize what’s going on.
If you want to use Crow Translate from the command line, run a help command to get started:
3. Tuxtrans
Tuxtrans is a full-featured, translation-oriented Linux operating system. It is based on Ubuntu and comes with many tools to help translators. These include Apertium and OmegaT. It is clearly aimed at someone who is a professional translator. The Tuxtrans site lists all software supplied with the operating system. You should also know that Tuxtrans is available for free.
Final thoughts
Linux offers many tools that can help you translate between languages. The best choices for the average user are Translate Shell and Crow Translate. If you are a professional, you may even want to consider using the Tuxtrans operating system as it provides all the tools you need to do your job efficiently. However, if you still prefer Google Translate, you can learn some of the tips for using Google Translate like a pro in this tutorial.
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