Google Translate API for Apps Script

Feature Highlights

• Automatically detect source language
• Automatic spelling corrections
• Automatic language correction
• Fast and reliable

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Usage
• Examples
• Credits, etc

Installation

• Select the menu item Tools > Script editor. If you are presented with a welcome screen, click Blank Project on the left to start a new project.
• Delete any code in the script editor. ...
• Copy & paste the code from dist/google-translate-api.js file
• Select the menu item File > Save. ...
• All done!

Note: Google have robust security protections to reduce risk from unverified apps, so we go through the authorization workflow when we first authorize our own apps. When you hit the run button (the black triangle) for the first time, you will be prompted to authorize the app to run.

When your first run your apps script, you may see the app isn’t verified screen and warnings about whether you want to continue. Click the Advanced button in the bottom left of the review permissions pop-up, and then click the ...(unsafe) at the bottom of the next screen to continue. Finally review the permissions and click ALLOW

Usage

Method: translate(text, options)

translate(text, options);

Parameter	Type	Optional	Default	Description
text	String	No	-	The text you want to translate.
options	Object	-	-	The options for translating.
options.from	String	Yes	'auto'	The language name/ISO 639-1 code to translate from. If none is given, it will auto detect the source language.
options.to	String	Yes	'en'	The language name/ISO 639-1 code to translate to. If none is given, it will translate to English.
options.raw	Boolean	Yes	false	If true, it will return the raw output that was received from Google Translate.

Returns: Object

Response Object:

Key	Type	Description
text	String	The translated text.
from	Object	-
from.language	Object	-
from.language.didYouMean	Boolean	Whether or not the API suggest a correction in the source language.
from.language.iso	String	The ISO 639-1 code of the language that the API has recognized in the text.
from.text	Object	-
from.text.autoCorrected	Boolean	Whether or not the API has auto corrected the original text.
from.text.value	String	The auto corrected text or the text with suggested corrections. Only returned if from.text.autoCorrected or from.text.didYouMean is true.
from.text.didYouMean	Boolean	Wherether or not the API has suggested corrections to the text
raw	String	The raw response from Google Translate servers. Only returned if options.raw is true in the request options.

Examples

From automatic language detection to English:

try {
    var res = translate('Tu es incroyable!', { to: 'en' });
    Logger.log(res.text); // OUTPUT: You are amazing!
} catch(err) {
  Logger.log(err);
}

From English to French, with a typo:

try {
    var res = translate('Thnak you', { from: 'en', to: 'fr' });
    Logger.log(res.text); // OUTPUT: Je vous remercie
    Logger.log(res.from.text.autoCorrected); // OUTPUT: true
    Logger.log(res.from.text.value); // OUTPUT: [Thank] you
    Logger.log(res.from.text.didYouMean); // OUTPUT: false
} catch(err) {
  Logger.log(err);
}

Sometimes Google Translate won't auto correct:

try {
    var res = translate('Thnak you', { from: 'en', to: 'fr' });
    Logger.log(res.text); // OUTPUT: ''
    Logger.log(res.from.text.autoCorrected); // OUTPUT: false
    Logger.log(res.from.text.value); // OUTPUT: [Thank] you
    Logger.log(res.from.text.didYouMean); // OUTPUT: true
} catch(err) {
  Logger.log(err);
}

Extras

If you liked this project, please give it a ⭐ in GitHub.

Credits to k3rn31p4nic for writing the Node.JS version of this library. I ported this to Apps Script without using external libraries.