Panel Translator

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

Features

1. Type text into a popup dialog from the Cinnamon panel and translate to the language of your choice
2. Optional automatically translate and playback (Text-to-Speech) from the current selection or clipboard
3. Middle mouse button can be configured to perform 8 different translation actions
4. Ctrl + Middle mouse button can be configured to perform 8 different translation actions

Current Limitations

1. 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.
2. 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.

Requirements

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

Installation

For the latest development version:

1. Clone the repo (or Download the latest repo by clinking on the green "code" button above then click "Download ZIP")

   git clone [email protected]:klangman/PanelTranslator.git
   

2. If you downloaded a ZIP, decompress the zip into a directory of your choice

   unzip ~/Downloads/PanelTranslator-main.zip
   

3. Change directory to the cloned repo or the decompressed ZIP file
4. Link the "PanelTranslator@klangman" directory into the "~/.local/share/cinnamon/applets/" directory

   ln -s $PWD/PanelTranslator@klangman ~/.local/share/cinnamon/applets/PanelTranslator@klangman
   

5. Right click on the cinnamon panel that you wish to add PanelTranslator to and click "Applets"
6. Select the "Panel Translator" entry and then click the "+" button at the bottom of the Applet window
7. Right click on the cinnamon panel and use "Panel edit mode" to enable moving the applet within the panel
8. Right click on the cinnamon panel and disable "Panel edit mode"

Feedback

Please, if you find any issues, feel free to create an issue here on Github. Thanks!