Google Translate using Python

A simple google translator for your console: It uses the labs api described here

http://code.google.com/apis/language/translate/v2/using_rest.html. The latest code is here.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# vim: tabstop=4 expandtab shiftwidth=4 softtabstop=4 textwidth=79 autoindent

"""
Python source code

Simple translator using the google translate API.
Example run:
    $ python translate1.py  -t sw "Hello. Are we meeting today?"
    Hello. Sisi ni mkutano wa leo?
"""
import urllib2
import json
import optparse

# API KEY
API_KEY = "Replace with your Key"
API_URL = "https://www.googleapis.com/language/translate/v2?\
key=%s&q=%s&source=%s&target=%s&prettyprint=false"

#Defaults
DEFAULT_SRC_LANG = "en"
DEFAULT_DEST_LANG = "fr"


class Translate(object):

"""Translate: Uses the google api to translate a string from one language
    to another
    """
def __init__(self):
super(Translate, self).__init__()
self.langs = ["af", "sq", "ar", "be", "bg", "ca", "zh-CN", "zh-TW",
"hr", "cs", "da", "nl", "en", "et", "tl", "fi", "fr",
"gl", "de", "el", "ht", "iw", "hi", "hu", "is", "id",
"ga", "it", "ja", "lv", "lt", "mk", "ms", "mt", "no",
"fa", "pl", "pt", "ro", "ru", "sr", "sk", "sl", "es",
"sw", "sv", "th", "tr", "uk", "vi", "cy", "yi"]

self.uri = API_URL

def translate(self, params):
"""Translates texts
        keywords:
            params - Dictionary
                src_text - String
                src_lang - 2 letter iso code for language
                dest_lang - 2 letter iso code for language
        """
req_uri = self.uri % (API_KEY, urllib2.quote(params['src_text']),
params['src_lang'],
params['dest_lang'])

hdl = urllib2.urlopen(req_uri)
resp = hdl.read()
hdl.close()
j = json.loads(resp)
try:
return j['data']['translations'][0]['translatedText']
except TypeError:
return ""


def check_lang(option, opt_str, value, parser):
""" Callback for optparse. Verifies that value is an item in a list"""
translator = Translate()
langs = translator.langs
if value not in langs:
raise optparse.OptionValueError(
"Invalid option: %s.\nLanguage not in %s" % (opt_str, langs))

setattr(parser.values, option.dest, value)


def main():
"""Main function. Called when this file is a shell script"""
translator = Translate()
usage = "usage: %prog [options] 'Text to translate'"
parser = optparse.OptionParser(usage)
parser.add_option("-f", "--from", action="callback",
callback=check_lang, dest="src_lang",
default=DEFAULT_SRC_LANG, type="string",
help="Translate from this language. Default is %default")

parser.add_option("-t", "--to", action="callback",
default=DEFAULT_DEST_LANG, type="string",
callback=check_lang, dest="dest_lang",
help="Translate to this language. Default is %default")

(options, args) = parser.parse_args()

params = {}
params['src_lang'] = options.src_lang
params['dest_lang'] = options.dest_lang
params['src_text'] = args[0]
dest_text = translator.translate(params)
print dest_text

if __name__ == '__main__':
main()