Google Translate API is now deprecated. | Hacker News Reader

Google Translate API is now deprecated.

code.google.com

69 pointsKlonoar16 comments

Wow, that is unexpected. I can think of a lot of developer tools that use google translate to give a rough first translate. Things like Wordpress and web framework plugins. It seems like they should have just dropped a fee structure on top of it and that would eliminate abuse.

If any developers out there are looking for a new API to target, you could consider mygengo. It's not free (because it isn't machine translation), but they do have developer tools and an API available: http://mygengo.com/services/api/

Full disclosure: I currently work with myGengo.

That said, we definitely welcome developers to our services. I just wanted to take a second to note this for any Python developers interested in our services, though - if you don't like the supplied Python library (I didn't), I wrote a new more concise and documented version. It's easier to follow and extend, and has some functions to help with encoding/decoding characters.

We're considering adopting this as the main Python library in the near future. Always interested in input from other developers!

https://github.com/ryanmcgrath/pygengo

All I can say is give Micorsoft a try: http://www.microsofttranslator.com/dev/

Thanks for the hot tip. And now here's my python wrapper for the Microsoft Translate API (bing) -- https://github.com/s29/mstranslate

No limits, seemingly comparable translation quality. The API was a bit annoying, but hey no surprise there. Thanks Microsoft!

A little more discussion on Google APIs being killed at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2589635

It's interesting that the reason for this is 'extensive abuse', does anyone know if it is talking about the 'translate party' websites that translate back and forth in rapid succession.

Perhaps to create "unique content" in other languages, to rank in the local google search engines.

That seems unlikely - there aren't too many, they don't make that many calls, and Google could just shut them down.

I think http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2590551 (andymurd) presents a more likely explanation:

> I think the "abuse" they are referring to is the common practise among blackhats of using Google Translate to spin stolen content to make it unique. Translating English -> $LANGUAGE -> English makes for a cheap, low grade article rewriter.

Probably not entirely viable nor wanted, but this did give me the idea of Google Translate using steganography to detect translated text through Google Translate to spot abusers. Just by translating the texts a little bit different for each user.

No i'm guessing it's things like the CNN scraper that was taking stories, automatically translating them to russian and then posting them. There was one in the news this week for having mistranslated Dominique Strauss Khan as the "head" (as in tip of penis) of the IMF.

here is my comment on the google code blogpost http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/05/spring-cleaning-for-s...

i recommend posting your disappointment there, too - as google obviously does not care about developers anymore (and so does also not care about hacker news discussions)

This is a bit of a slap in the face -- could they not rate limit the service and charge for it?

At least one developer is very upset about Google Translate API change: http://groups.google.com/group/google-ajax-search-api/browse...

Wow, this sucks. One of the reasons I historically haven't been worried about Google and some of the "evils" that people argue they are guilty of, is because they provide awesome APIs for developers free of charge and with next to no rate-limiting or authentication.

This is a slippery slope for Google. Why should I build applications on top of their products, if I know that the API can be ripped out from under me?

Recent developments in the 'Google Platform' front (new App Engine price structure, API shutdowns, crippled Google Apps Standard offering, etc) severely dented my belief on a "full cloud" future. Perhaps we shouldn't outsource (== depend) too much to cloud vendors.

Darnit Google. Can't you keep any API running for more than 2 years? Just take a hint from AWS and sell them!

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