Overview

The Cloud Translation API uses Google’s neural machine translation technology to instantly translate texts into more than one hundred languages.

In lab we will use the API to translate text and detect what language the text is using.

Create an API Key

Since you’ll be using curl to send a request to the Translation API, you need to generate an API key to pass in our request URL. To create an API key, navigate to APIs & services in the left menu and click on Credentials:

Then click Create credentials:

In the drop down menu, select API key:

Copy the key you just generated.

Next you’ll save it to an environment variable to avoid having to insert the value of your API key in each request.

Run the following in Cloud Shell. Be sure to replace <your_api_key> with the key you just copied:

export API_KEY=<YOUR_API_KEY>

Translate Text

In this example you will translate the string “My name is Steve” into Spanish.

Pass the text to be translated, along with the API key environment variable, to the Translation API with the following curl command:

TEXT="My%20name%20is%20Steve"
curl "https://translation.googleapis.com/language/translate/v2?target=es&key=${API_KEY}&q=${TEXT}"

Your response should look like this:

{
  "data": {
    "translations": [
      {
        "translatedText": "Mi nombre es Steve",
        "detectedSourceLanguage": "en"
      }
    ]
  }
}

In the response, you can see that the translated text and the source language that the API detected.

Premium Model

The Google Cloud Translation API uses a standard edition model for most translation tasks. Google has augmented its translation service to use a more robust Neural machine Translation System. To use this premium model, read this guide for more information.

Detect Language

In addition to translating text, the Translation API also can detect the language of the text. In this example you will detect the language of two strings.

Pass the text to be examined, along with the API key environment variable, to the Translation API with the following curl command:

TEXT_ONE="Meu%20nome%20é%20Steven"
TEXT_TWO="日本のグーグルのオフィスは、東京の六本木ヒルズにあります"
curl "https://translation.googleapis.com/language/translate/v2/detect?key=${API_KEY}&q=${TEXT_ONE}&q=${TEXT_TWO}"

Your response should look like this:

{
  "data": {
    "detections": [
      [
        {
          "confidence": 0.20671661198139191,
          "isReliable": false,
          "language": "pt"
        }
      ],
      [
        {
          "confidence": 0.97750955820083618,
          "isReliable": false,
          "language": "ja"
        }
      ]
    ]
  }
}

The languages returned by this sample are “pt” and “ja”. These are the ISO-639-1 identifiers for Portuguese and Japanese. This list of languages supported by the Translation API lists all the possible language codes which can be returned.

That concludes our lab for Google Cloud Translation API.

Happy Learning !!!