Origninally posted on TechHui
I know “Microsoft” is not the first word that comes mind when you’re writing a ruby application but since Google dropped the free tier for their translation service the Microsoft Translator API is a good alternative for a small/personal project that you don’t want to have to bother with the monthly bill.
Recently I’ve had to use this API in a project and this weekend I extracted the functionality out into a simple gem. I present to you (queue applause) microsoft_translator
Before translating things from your ruby application you first need to sign up for the Microsoft Translator API in the Windows Azure Datamarket
Also, you shouldn’t stress about what to put for the Redirect URI. For the purposes of this gem you won’t be using it so your project’s homepage will work just fine. You’ll use the Client ID and Client secret to authenticate your requests to the API. Once this is done you’ll install it like you would any other gem…
First create a MicrosoftTranslator::Client with your Client ID & secret. To translate pass in the foreign text allong with the language codes for the language you are going from/to and the content type. The content type is either “text/plain” or “text/html”
translator = MicrosoftTranslator::Client.new('your_client_id', 'your_client_secret')
spanish = "hasta luego muchacha"translator.translate(spanish,"es","en","text/html")
# => "until then girl"That’s about it! This is a list of the supported languages by the Microsoft Translate API and here are all the language codes as a helpful reference.
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