diegonz/babelj

The goal of this project is to make the easiest, fastest, and most painless way of translating text on the go, which can run across ALL platforms supported by Java (including Linux, Mac OS X, IllumOS(Solaris), BSD *nixes, Windows and ARM).

BabelJ

Purpose

The goal of this project is to make the easiest, fastest, and most painless way of translating text on the go, which can run across ALL platforms supported by Java (including Linux, Mac OS X, IllumOS(Solaris), BSD *nixes, Windows and ARM).

BabelJ is a simple command line tool, designed to simply translate text.

Features

• Get input from system clipboard, user selection or passing text as a CLI argument.
• Store and load settings from a simple JSON file.
• Use yandex, microsoft or google as translation backend.
• Use CLI arguments to load/overwrite settings.
• Show the obtained translated text outputting to stdout or as a OS-independent notification.
• Put the translation into system clipboard.

Requirements

• Java 8 JRE/JDK (OpenJDK/Oracle).

Optional dependencies

Linux

• libnotify (Installed by default on most of gnome-based distributions).

Mac Os X

• terminal-notifier (https://github.com/julienXX/terminal-notifier).

Installation

• One size fits all: Download latest released jar from Releases.
• You can also build yourself the jar executable using the default shadowJar gradle task included (bundling the code alongside the libraries).

Config file

Below an example of the settings file placed by default at the root of your user folder and named .babelj.json.

{
  "default_backend": "yandex",
  "yandex_key": "YourYandexApiKey",
  "microsoft_key": "YourMicrosoftApiKey",
  "microsoft_id": "[email protected]",
  "google_key": "YourGoogleApiKey",
  "google_id": "[email protected]",
  "default_language": "en",
  "default_input": "selection",
  "default_output": "notify",
  "default_exchange": false
}

Usage examples

• You can run java -jar babelj to run the translation, picking preferences from default settings file (~/.babelj.json).

• You can also override config file settings using CLI arguments.

• Also supports the @ syntax, which allows you to put all your options into a file and pass this file as parameter:

  java -jar babelj.jar @/tmp/parameters

• You can create a default (or CLI-fed) initial config file, using the --save-config flag alongside your preferred CLI arguments.

Below a copy of the output of running java -jar babelj.jar command using -h or --help flag, to show all available CLI arguments.

Usage: <babelj.jar> [options]
  Options:
    --help, -h
      Show help and usage options
      Default: false
    --api-id, -id
      Translate backend ID. [[email protected]]
    --api-key, -a
      Translate backend API key. [yourApiKey]
    --backend, -b
      Target translate backend. [yandex|microsoft|google]
    --config-file, -c
      Custom path to config file. [/path/to/config.json]
    --exchange, -x
      Exchange clipboard content with translation result.
      Default: false
    --input, -i
      Desired input method. [clipboard|selection]
    --message, -m
      The text to translate itself given as a String argument.
    --output, -o
      Desired output method. [notify|stdout|none]
    --save-config
      Save (overwriting) current settings to config file (into default or
      given path) and exit.
      Default: false
    --source-lang, -s
      Source language to translate from. [en|ru|fr|es|...]
    --target-lang, -t
      Target language to translate. [en|ru|fr|es|...]

Note: Each CLI arguments used, overrides their corresponding settings stored/loaded from the config file(s).

License

This project is under the GPLv3 License. See the LICENSE file for the full license text.