Translate Shell (formerly Google Translate CLI) is a command-line translator powered by Google Translate (default), Bing Translator, Yandex.Translate, and Apertium. It gives you easy access to one of these translation engines in your terminal:

$ trans 'Saluton, Mondo!'
Saluton, Mondo!

Hello, World!

Translations of Saluton, Mondo!
[ Esperanto -> English ]
Saluton ,
    Hello,
Mondo !
    World!

By default, translations with detailed explanations are shown. You can also translate the text briefly: (only the most relevant translation will be shown)

$ trans -brief 'Saluton, Mondo!'
Hello, World!

Translate Shell can also be used like an interactive shell; input the text to be translated line by line:

$ trans -shell -brief
> Rien ne réussit comme le succès.
Nothing succeeds like success.
> Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.
What does not kill me makes me stronger.
> Юмор есть остроумие глубокого чувства.
Humor has a deep sense of wit.
> 學而不思則罔，思而不學則殆。
Learning without thought is labor lost, thought without learning is perilous.
> 幸福になるためには、人から愛されるのが一番の近道。
In order to be happy, the best way is to be loved by people.

Translate Shell is known to work on many POSIX-compliant systems, including but not limited to:

• GNU/Linux
• macOS
• *BSD
• Android (through Termux)
• Windows (through WSL, Cygwin, or MSYS2)

• GNU Awk (gawk) 4.0 or later
  • This program relies heavily on GNU extensions of the AWK language, which are non-portable for other AWK implementations (e.g. nawk).
  • How to get gawk:
    • gawk comes with all GNU/Linux distributions.
    • On FreeBSD, gawk is available in the ports.
    • On macOS, gawk is available in MacPorts and Homebrew.
  • Please note that gawk 5.2.0 has a known bug -- update to gawk 5.2.1 instead.
• GNU Bash or Zsh
  • You may use Translate Shell from any Unix shell of your choice (bash, zsh, ksh, tcsh, fish, etc.); however, the wrapper script requires either bash or zsh installed.

These dependencies are optional, but strongly recommended for full functionality:

• curl with OpenSSL support
• GNU FriBidi: an implementation of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (bidi)
  • required for displaying text in Right-to-Left scripts (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew)
• mplayer, mpv, mpg123, or eSpeak
  • required for the Text-to-Speech functionality
• less, more or most
  • required for terminal paging
• rlwrap: a GNU readline wrapper
  • required for readline-style editing and history in the interactive shell
• aspell or hunspell
  • required for spell checking

It is a must to have corresponding fonts for the language(s) / script(s) you wish to display in your terminal. See wiki: Writing Systems and Fonts for more details on scripts and recommended Unicode fonts.

Start an interactive shell and translate anything you input into your native language: (in bash or zsh)

$ gawk -f <(curl -Ls --compressed https://git.io/translate) -- -shell

(in fish)

$ gawk -f (curl -Ls --compressed https://git.io/translate | psub) -- -shell

To try out via Docker, run:

$ docker pull soimort/translate-shell

Then you may start an interactive shell from the Docker image for translating:

$ docker run -it soimort/translate-shell -shell

Download the self-contained executable and place it into your path. It's everything you need.

$ wget git.io/trans
$ chmod +x ./trans

There is a GPG signature.

See wiki: Distros on how to install from a specific package manager on your distro.

Add the following line to your .zshrc:

antigen bundle soimort/translate-shell@develop

$ git clone https://github.com/soimort/translate-shell
$ cd translate-shell/
$ make
$ [sudo] make install

In case you have only zsh but not bash in your system, build with:

$ make TARGET=zsh

The default PREFIX of installation is /usr/local. To install the program to somewhere else (e.g. /usr, ~/.local), use:

$ [sudo] make PREFIX=/usr install

Google Translate can identify the language of the source text automatically, and Translate Shell by default translates the source text into the language of your locale.

$ trans vorto

Translate a word into French:

$ trans :fr word

Translate a word into Chinese and Japanese: (use a plus sign "+" as the delimiter)

$ trans :zh+ja word

Alternatively, equals sign ("=") can be used in place of the colon (":"). Note that in some shells (e.g. zsh), equals signs may be interpreted differently, therefore the argument specifying languages needs to be protected:

$ trans {=zh+ja} word
$ trans '=zh+ja' word

You can also use the -target (-t) option to specify the target language(s):

$ trans -t zh+ja word

With the -t option, the name of the language may also be used instead of the language code:

$ trans -t japanese word
$ trans -t 日本語 word

Google Translate may wrongly identify the source text as some other language than you expected:

$ trans 手紙

In that case, you need to specify its language explicitly:

$ trans ja: 手紙
$ trans zh: 手紙

You can also use the -source (-s) option to specify the source language:

$ trans -s ja 手紙

Translate each word alone:

$ trans en:zh word processor

Put words into one argument, and translate them as a whole:

$ trans en:zh "word processor"

Translating a sentence is much the same like translating a phrase; you can just quote the sentence into one argument:

$ trans :zh "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,"
$ trans :zh 'To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,'

It is also possible to translate multi-line sentences:

$ trans :zh "Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
> To the last syllable of recorded time;
> And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
> The way to dusty death."

To avoid punctuation marks (e.g. "!") or other special characters being interpreted by the shell, use single quotes:

$ trans :zh 'Out, out, brief candle!'

There are some cases though, you may still want to use double quotes: (e.g. the sentence contains a single quotation mark "'")

$ trans :zh "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player"

Alternatively, use the -join-sentence (-j) option to treat all arguments as one sentence so that quotes can be omitted:

$ trans -j :zh Life\'s but a walking shadow, a poor player

By default, Translate Shell displays translations in a verbose manner. If you prefer to see only the most relevant translation, there is a brief mode available using the -brief (-b) option:

$ trans -b :fr "Saluton, Mondo"

In brief mode, phonetic notation (if any) is not shown by default. To enable this, put an at sign "@" in front of the language code:

$ trans -b :@ja "Saluton, Mondo"

Google Translate can be used as a dictionary. When translating a word and the target language is the same as the source language, the dictionary entry of the word is shown:

$ trans :en word

To enable dictionary mode no matter whether the source language and the target language are identical, use the -dictionary (-d) option.

$ trans -d fr: mot

Note: Not every language supported by Google Translate has provided dictionary data. See wiki: Languages to find out which language(s) has dictionary support.

Use the -identify (-id) option to identify the language of the text:

$ trans -id 言葉

Use the -play (-p) option to listen to the translation:

$ trans -b -p :ja "Saluton, Mondo"

Use the -speak (-sp) option to listen to the original text:

$ trans -sp "你好，世界"

Sometimes the content of translation can be too much for display in one screen. Use the -view (-v) option to view the translation in a terminal pager such as less or more:

$ trans -d -v word

Right-to-Left (RTL) languages are well supported via GNU FriBidi.

The program will automatically adjust the screen width for padding when displaying right-to-left languages. Alternatively, you may use the -width (-w) option to specify the screen width:

$ trans -b -w 40 :he "Saluton, Mondo"

See wiki: Languages to find out which language(s) uses a Right-to-Left writing system.

If no source text is given in command-line arguments, the program will read from standard input, or from the file specified by the -input (-i) option:

$ echo "Saluton, Mondo" | trans -b :fr
$ trans -b -i input.txt :fr

Translations are written to standard output, or to the file specified by the -output (-o) option:

$ echo "Saluton, Mondo" | trans -b -o output.txt :fr

Instead of using the -input option, a file URI scheme (file:// followed by the file name) can be used as a command-line argument:

$ trans :fr file://input.txt

Note: Brief mode is used when translating from file URI schemes.

To translate a web page, an http(s) URI scheme can be used as an argument:

$ trans :fr http://www.w3.org/

A browser session will open for viewing the translation (via Google Translate's web interface). To specify your web browser of choice, use the -browser option:

$ trans -browser firefox :fr http://www.w3.org/

Use the -linguist (-L) option to view details of one or more languages:

$ trans -L fr
$ trans -L de+en

Some basic information of the language will be displayed: its English name and endonym (language name in the language itself), language family, writing system, canonical Google Translate code and ISO 639-3 code.

Start an interactive shell using the -shell (or -interactive, -I) option:

$ trans -shell

You may specify the source language and the target language(s) before starting an interactive shell:

$ trans -shell en:fr

You may also change these settings during an interactive session. See wiki: REPL for more advanced usage of the interactive Translate Shell.

For more details on command-line options, see the man page trans(1) or use trans -M in a terminal.

Usage:  trans [OPTIONS] [SOURCES]:[TARGETS] [TEXT]...

Information options:
    -V, -version
        Print version and exit.
    -H, -help
        Print help message and exit.
    -M, -man
        Show man page and exit.
    -T, -reference
        Print reference table of languages (in endonyms) and codes, and exit.
    -R, -reference-english
        Print reference table of languages (in English names) and codes, and exit.
    -S, -list-engines
        List available translation engines and exit.
    -list-languages
        List all languages (in endonyms) and exit.
    -list-languages-english
        List all languages (in English names) and exit.
    -list-codes
        List all codes and exit.
    -list-all
        List all languages (endonyms and English names) and codes, and exit.
    -L CODES, -linguist CODES
        Print details of languages and exit.
    -U, -upgrade
        Check for upgrade of this program.

Translator options:
    -e ENGINE, -engine ENGINE
        Specify the translation engine to use.

Display options:
    -verbose
        Verbose mode. (default)
    -b, -brief
        Brief mode.
    -d, -dictionary
        Dictionary mode.
    -identify
        Language identification.
    -show-original Y/n
        Show original text or not.
    -show-original-phonetics Y/n
        Show phonetic notation of original text or not.
    -show-translation Y/n
        Show translation or not.
    -show-translation-phonetics Y/n
        Show phonetic notation of translation or not.
    -show-prompt-message Y/n
        Show prompt message or not.
    -show-languages Y/n
        Show source and target languages or not.
    -show-original-dictionary y/N
        Show dictionary entry of original text or not.
    -show-dictionary Y/n
        Show dictionary entry of translation or not.
    -show-alternatives Y/n
        Show alternative translations or not.
    -w NUM, -width NUM
        Specify the screen width for padding.
    -indent NUM
        Specify the size of indent (number of spaces).
    -theme FILENAME
        Specify the theme to use.
    -no-theme
        Do not use any other theme than default.
    -no-ansi
        Do not use ANSI escape codes.
    -no-autocorrect
        Do not autocorrect. (if defaulted by the translation engine)
    -no-bidi
        Do not convert bidirectional texts.
    -bidi
        Always convert bidirectional texts.
    -no-warn
        Do not write warning messages to stderr.
    -dump
        Print raw API response instead.

Audio options:
    -p, -play
        Listen to the translation.
    -speak
        Listen to the original text.
    -n VOICE, -narrator VOICE
        Specify the narrator, and listen to the translation.
    -player PROGRAM
        Specify the audio player to use, and listen to the translation.
    -no-play
        Do not listen to the translation.
    -no-translate
        Do not translate anything when using -speak.
    -download-audio
        Download the audio to the current directory.
    -download-audio-as FILENAME
        Download the audio to the specified file.

Terminal paging and browsing options:
    -v, -view
        View the translation in a terminal pager.
    -pager PROGRAM
        Specify the terminal pager to use, and view the translation.
    -no-view, -no-pager
        Do not view the translation in a terminal pager.
    -browser PROGRAM
        Specify the web browser to use.
    -no-browser
        Do not open the web browser.

Networking options:
    -x HOST:PORT, -proxy HOST:PORT
        Use HTTP proxy on given port.
    -u STRING, -user-agent STRING
        Specify the User-Agent to identify as.
    -4, -ipv4, -inet4-only
        Connect only to IPv4 addresses.
    -6, -ipv6, -inet6-only
        Connect only to IPv6 addresses.

Interactive shell options:
    -I, -interactive, -shell
        Start an interactive shell.
    -E, -emacs
        Start the GNU Emacs front-end for an interactive shell.
    -no-rlwrap
        Do not invoke rlwrap when starting an interactive shell.

I/O options:
    -i FILENAME, -input FILENAME
        Specify the input file.
    -o FILENAME, -output FILENAME
        Specify the output file.

Language preference options:
    -hl CODE, -host CODE
        Specify the host (interface) language.
    -s CODES, -sl CODES, -source CODES, -from CODES
        Specify the source language(s), joined by '+'.
    -t CODES, -tl CODES, -target CODES, -to CODES
        Specify the target language(s), joined by '+'.

Text preprocessing options:
    -j, -join-sentence
        Treat all arguments as one single sentence.

Other options:
    -no-init
        Do not load any initialization script.

See the man page trans(1) for more information.

Use trans -R or trans -T to view the reference table in a terminal.

For more details on languages and corresponding codes, see wiki: Languages.

Lists of all languages, writing systems and fonts for reference:

• Languages
• Writing Systems and Fonts

The following pages demonstrate the advanced usage of Translate Shell:

• REPL
• Text Editor Integration
• Narrator Selection
• Configuration
• Themes
• AppleScript

Find out whether your Linux distribution has included Translate Shell in its official repository. If not, contribute one:

• Distros

Frequently Asked Questions, historical stuff, AWK coding style, etc.:

• FAQ
• History
• AWK Style Guide

Please review the guidelines for contributing before reporting an issue or sending a pull request.

This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain. See LICENSE and WAIVER for details.