#!/usr/bin/env python
# $Id: translate,v 1.1 2009/06/23 22:41:45 friedman Exp $

# Commentary:

# Modified from http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6870143

# The google translate API can be found here:
# http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlanguage/documentation/#Examples

# Usage: translate en es "where are you"
# => donde estas

# Code:

from urllib2 import urlopen
from urllib import urlencode
import sys

lang1       = sys.argv[1]
lang2       = sys.argv[2]
langpair    = '%s|%s' %(lang1, lang2)
text        = ' '.join (sys.argv[3:])

base_url    = 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/language/translate?'

params      = urlencode ((('v', 1.0),
                          ('q', text),
                          ('langpair', langpair),
                          ))
url         = base_url + params

content     = urlopen (url).read ()
start_idx   = content.find ('"translatedText":"') + 18
translation = content[start_idx:]
end_idx     = translation.find ('"}, "')
translation = translation[:end_idx]

print translation

# eof