Localize Application using Google Translator

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Introduction

Since everyone wants their application to be presented according to the user's culture, location, etc, in this example I used the Google Translator, calling GoogleTranslator by HttpRequest and reading the Translated string from the Response stream.

Background

This code will click many ideas in your mind as to how you can use resources already available in the market using HttpRequest and Response.

Using the Code

In the below code, I translate from English Language to the required language. You can change it to the desired culture. Just replace 'en' with the desired culture name.

private string Translate(string text, string l)
{
string translated = null;
HttpWebRequest hwr = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create
	("http://translate.google.com/translate_s?hl=en&clss=&q=" + 
	text.Replace(" ", "+") + "&tq=&sl=en&tl=" + l);
HttpWebResponse res = (HttpWebResponse)hwr.GetResponse();
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(res.GetResponseStream());
string html = sr.ReadToEnd();
int rawlength1 = html.IndexOf("<span id=otq><b>");
string rawStr1 = html.Substring(rawlength1);
int rawlength2 = rawStr1.IndexOf("</b>");
string rawstr2 = rawStr1.Substring(0, rawlength2);
translated = rawstr2.Replace("<span id=otq><b>", "");
tbStringToTranslate.Text = text;
return translated;
}        

Points of Interest

I have written this code to localize my application texts, Labels...... I too used to store translated stings in my DataBase. This makes me use this code as I don't need to feed translated data in database whenever a required text to translate is passed to it. First look in DB, if not found it gets it from Google Translator and feeds in DB. I don't even require to maintain resource files for different cultures because I get the Current culture from System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture and pass it to Translate();

History

• 25^th January, 2010: Initial post