What is the best way to translate a big amount of text data? [closed]

Question

I have a lot of text data and want to translate it to different languages.

Possible ways I know:

• Google Translate API
• Bing Translator API

The problem is that all these services have limitations on text length, number of calls, etc. which makes them inconvenient in use.

What services / ways you could advice to use in this case?

Answer 1

I had to solve the same problem when integrating language translation with an XMPP chat server. I partitioned my payload (the text I needed to translate) into smaller subsets of complete sentences.

I can’t recall the exact number, but with Google's REST-based translation URL, I translated a set of completed sentences that collectively had a total of less than (or equal to) 1024 characters, so a large paragraph would result in multiple translation service calls.

Answer 2

Break your big text into tokenized strings, and then pass each token through the translator via a loop. Store the translated output in an array and once all tokens are translated and stored in the array, put them back together and you will have a completely translated document.

Just to prove a point, I threw this together :) It is rough around the edges, but it will handle a whole lot of text and it does just as good as Google for translation accuracy because it uses the Google API. I processed Apple's entire 2005 SEC 10-K filing with this code and the click of one button (took about 45 minutes).

The result was basically identical to what you would get if you copied and pasted one sentence at a time into Google Translate. It isn't perfect (ending punctuation is not accurate and I didn't write to the text file line by line), but it does show a proof of concept. It could have better punctuation if you worked with Regex some more.

Imports System.IO
Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions

Public Class Form1

    Dim file As New String("Translate Me.txt")
    Dim lineCount As Integer = countLines()

    Private Function countLines()

        If IO.File.Exists(file) Then

            Dim reader As New StreamReader(file)
            Dim lineCount As Integer = Split(reader.ReadToEnd.Trim(), Environment.NewLine).Length
            reader.Close()
            Return lineCount

        Else

            MsgBox(file + " cannot be found anywhere!", 0, "Oops!")

        End If

        Return 1

    End Function

    Private Sub translateText()

        Dim lineLoop As Integer = 0
        Dim currentLine As String
        Dim currentLineSplit() As String
        Dim input1 As New StreamReader(file)
        Dim input2 As New StreamReader(file)
        Dim filePunctuation As Integer = 1
        Dim linePunctuation As Integer = 1

        Dim delimiters(3) As Char
        delimiters(0) = "."
        delimiters(1) = "!"
        delimiters(2) = "?"

        Dim entireFile As String
        entireFile = (input1.ReadToEnd)

        For i = 1 To Len(entireFile)
            If Mid$(entireFile, i, 1) = "." Then filePunctuation += 1
        Next

        For i = 1 To Len(entireFile)
            If Mid$(entireFile, i, 1) = "!" Then filePunctuation += 1
        Next

        For i = 1 To Len(entireFile)
            If Mid$(entireFile, i, 1) = "?" Then filePunctuation += 1
        Next

        Dim sentenceArraySize = filePunctuation + lineCount

        Dim sentenceArrayCount = 0
        Dim sentence(sentenceArraySize) As String
        Dim sentenceLoop As Integer

        While lineLoop < lineCount

            linePunctuation = 1

            currentLine = (input2.ReadLine)

            For i = 1 To Len(currentLine)
                If Mid$(currentLine, i, 1) = "." Then linePunctuation += 1
            Next

            For i = 1 To Len(currentLine)
                If Mid$(currentLine, i, 1) = "!" Then linePunctuation += 1
            Next

            For i = 1 To Len(currentLine)
                If Mid$(currentLine, i, 1) = "?" Then linePunctuation += 1
            Next

            currentLineSplit = currentLine.Split(delimiters)
            sentenceLoop = 0

            While linePunctuation > 0

                Try

                    Dim trans As New Google.API.Translate.TranslateClient("")
                    sentence(sentenceArrayCount) = trans.Translate(currentLineSplit(sentenceLoop), Google.API.Translate.Language.English, Google.API.Translate.Language.German, Google.API.Translate.TranslateFormat.Text)
                    sentenceLoop += 1
                    linePunctuation -= 1
                    sentenceArrayCount += 1

                Catch ex As Exception

                    sentenceLoop += 1
                    linePunctuation -= 1

                End Try

            End While

            lineLoop += 1

        End While

        Dim newFile As New String("Translated Text.txt")
        Dim outputLoopCount As Integer = 0

        Using output As StreamWriter = New StreamWriter(newFile)

            While outputLoopCount < sentenceArraySize

                output.Write(sentence(outputLoopCount) + ". ")

                outputLoopCount += 1

            End While

        End Using

        input1.Close()
        input2.Close()

    End Sub

    Private Sub translateButton_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles translateButton.Click

        translateText()

    End Sub

End Class