A translator applet for the Cinnamon desktop environment
Uses Google, Bing and others (via translate-shell) to translate text into more then 150 languages (depending on the version of translate-shell you install).
This applet is now available in the cinnamon-spices-applets repo meaning it can be found in the "Applets" tool under the "Download" tab from the cinnamon desktop settings and at the following URL:
https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/applets/view/385
- Type text into a popup dialog from the Cinnamon panel and translate to the language of your choice
- Optional automatically translate and playback (Text-to-Speech) from the current selection or clipboard
- Middle mouse button can be configured to perform 8 different translation actions
- Ctrl + Middle mouse button can be configured to perform 8 different translation actions
- The text boxes are using St.Entry widgets without scroll bars so I have limited the text to 200 characters until I can find a way to have a type of widget that supports scroll bars. It also seems like translation-shell can not perform "Text-to-Speech" when the text is more than than 200 characters.
- In my testing, only the Goggle translate engine works consistently (but Bing worked most of the time), and it's the only one that would perform Text-to-Speech for me. I allow other engines to be selected in case some future versions of translate-shell (or different OS setups) works better then what I have seen.
The translate-shell package must be installed for this applet to operate correctly.
sudo apt-get install translate-shell
It's best to install translate-shell 0.9.7.1 for more supported languages and other improvements, but the Mint 21.2 repositories only have version 0.9.6.12 currently. You might want to visit the translate-shell website below to learn how to install the most up to date version, but this is optional.
https://www.soimort.org/translate-shell/#installation
In order to allow for Text-to-Speech functionality one of mplayer, mpv, mpg123, or eSpeak must be installed. I tested with mplayer mostly.
sudo apt-get install mplayer
For the latest development version:
- Clone the repo (or Download the latest repo by clinking on the green "code" button above then click "Download ZIP")
git clone git@github.com:klangman/PanelTranslator.git - If you downloaded a ZIP, decompress the zip into a directory of your choice
unzip ~/Downloads/PanelTranslator-main.zip - Change directory to the cloned repo or the decompressed ZIP file
- Link the "PanelTranslator@klangman" directory into the "~/.local/share/cinnamon/applets/" directory
ln -s $PWD/PanelTranslator@klangman ~/.local/share/cinnamon/applets/PanelTranslator@klangman - Right click on the cinnamon panel that you wish to add PanelTranslator to and click "Applets"
- Select the "Panel Translator" entry and then click the "+" button at the bottom of the Applet window
- Right click on the cinnamon panel and use "Panel edit mode" to enable moving the applet within the panel
- Right click on the cinnamon panel and disable "Panel edit mode"
Please, if you find any issues, feel free to create an issue here on Github. Thanks!