Auto translate using Translation Engine

[timoye]

translation:auto-translate
This command will scan your project (using the paths supplied in the configuration file) and create all of the missing translation keys. This can be run for all languages or a single language.

It will then translate all the tokens using Google Translate for FREE!

You can edit these auto translated texts using the User interface

[q--]

Hi,

I tested this pull request as we're looking into using this for our own project.

Summary

It works mostly fine, but it has trouble with

1. translating texts where the key is different from the associated English text, as it translates the key instead of the value
2. Single quotes inside calls to __(): __('Don't mess up my translation') becomes Don\\'t mess up my translation instead of Don't mess up my translation

as well as some smaller issues.

Longer version

How did I test the package?

1. Install the timoye/laravel-translation auto-translate branch with Composer.
2. Create a language with missing translations.
3. Run php artisan translation:auto-translate [languageCode] and check if it captures all keys.

How did I compare translations?

1. Sort both en.json and <new language>.json using a tool like JSON sorter.
2. Paste both in DiffNow or a similar tool and check for new or deleted lines and how it translates each line.

Note
I did not compare the lang/<languageCode>/<...>.php files.

Results

Neutral

• It skips keys in en.json that are not used in the code. This is because it uses the translatable texts from the source code instead of from en.json!

Buggy or problematic for my use case

• Instead of translating the value in en.json, it translates the key from the source code. This causes issues if the key is not equal to the translatable text!

• Calls to __() with PHP code inside are not recognized (and therefore skipped); for example (changed up a bit to remove project details):

__('The user :user has been updated', ['user' => $user->name]), __($user->gender == 'female' ? 'Please take a look at her profile.' : 'Please take a look at his profile.', ['user' => e($user->name)]), __('Proceed to profile page'), subroute('profile.index'));

This is the only one I found in my project, so it's not the most pressing issue.

• Unlike the other package I tried using, it does not completely ignore texts with quotes. However, because it extracts them from the source code, quotes are double-escaped: __('Don\'t mess up my translation') becomes the key Don\\'t mess up my translation, instead of Don't mess up my translation (backslashes are not needed here, as JSON uses double quotes instead of single quotes).

Good

• Texts with newlines in the key and/or value, for example, "Preferably, as long as there are mentors of the same\n gender available": "Preferably, as long as there are mentors of the same\n gender available", are handled correctly (unlike tanmuhittin/laravel-google-translate). Although in my translation, it uses \r\n in the key (and \n in the translation). This may be Windows-specific.
• Texts with double quotes in the key/value are handled correctly (unlike the other package I tried using):

  "You are not allowed to send a message to the user with user id \":id\".": "You are not allowed to send a message to the user with user id \":id\".",

  becomes

  "You are not allowed to send a message to the user with user id \":id\".": "Non è consentito inviare un messaggio all'utente con ID utente \":id\".",

Note
I only checked the JSON; files in lang/<languageCode>/*.php have not been checked.

[q--]

W.r.t. the issue I identified earlier,

Instead of translating the value in en.json, it translates the key from the source code. This causes issues if the key is not equal to the translatable text!

I fixed this function to pass the value from the source language instead:

    /**
     * Loop through all the keys and get translated text from Google Translate
     *
     * @param $language
     */
    public function translateLanguage($language){
        $translations = $this->getSourceLanguageTranslationsWith($language);

        foreach ($translations as $type => $groups) {
            foreach ($groups as $group => $translations) {
                foreach ($translations as $key => $value) {
                    $sourceLanguageValue = $value[$this->sourceLanguage];
                    $targetLanguageValue = $value[$language];
                    
                    if (in_array($targetLanguageValue,["",null])){
                        $new_value=$this->getGoogleTranslate($language,$sourceLanguageValue);
                        if (Str::contains($group, 'single')) {
                            $this->addSingleTranslation($language, $group, $key,$new_value);
                        } else {
                            $this->addGroupTranslation($language, $group, $key,$new_value);
                        }
                    }

                }
            }
        }
    }

It now works correctly

[q--]

I've created a pull request for your auto-translate branch to fix this, please check it out!

timoye#1

[timoye]

I have merged the PR timoye#1 from @q--

[q--]

It isn't strictly necessary to pass the source language, but it's my understanding that if you don't, Google Translate will try to guess the source language (it's set to auto). That can sometimes lead to wrong results if two languages have the same word with a different meaning, e.g. the word 'brand' means fire in Dutch.

[timoye]

oh I see. that is correct.
I didn't look at that.

[q--]

No problem. Thanks for your part of writing this pull request

[timoye]

It is my pleasure.
It was quite helpful to me and I thought to let others use it also