2. Setup and requirements

Self-paced environment setup

1. Sign-in to theGoogle Cloud Console and create a new project or reuse an existing one. If you don't already have a Gmail or Google Workspace account, you mustcreate one.

• TheProject name is the display name for this project's participants. It is a character string not used by Google APIs. You can always update it.
• TheProject ID is unique across all Google Cloud projects and is immutable (cannot be changed after it has been set). The Cloud Console auto-generates a unique string; usually you don't care what it is. In most codelabs, you'll need to reference your Project ID (typically identified asPROJECT_ID). If you don't like the generated ID, you might generate another random one. Alternatively, you can try your own, and see if it's available. It can't be changed after this step and remains for the duration of the project.
• For your information, there is a third value, aProject Number, which some APIs use. Learn more about all three of these values in thedocumentation.

2. Next, you'll need toenable billing in the Cloud Console to use Cloud resources/APIs. Running through this codelab won't cost much, if anything at all. To shut down resources to avoid incurring billing beyond this tutorial, you can delete the resources you created or delete the project. New Google Cloud users are eligible for the$300 USD Free Trial program.

Start Cloud Shell

While Google Cloud can be operated remotely from your laptop, in this codelab you will be usingCloud Shell, a command line environment running in the Cloud.

Activate Cloud Shell

1. From the Cloud Console, clickActivate Cloud Shell.

If this is your first time starting Cloud Shell, you're presented with an intermediate screen describing what it is. If you were presented with an intermediate screen, clickContinue.

It should only take a few moments to provision and connect to Cloud Shell.

This virtual machine is loaded with all the development tools needed. It offers a persistent 5 GB home directory and runs in Google Cloud, greatly enhancing network performance and authentication. Much, if not all, of your work in this codelab can be done with a browser.

Once connected to Cloud Shell, you should see that you are authenticated and that the project is set to your project ID.

2. Run the following command in Cloud Shell to confirm that you are authenticated:

gcloud auth list

Command output

 Credentialed AccountsACTIVE  ACCOUNT*       <my_account>@<my_domain.com>To set the active account, run:    $ gcloud config set account `ACCOUNT`

Note: Thegcloud command-line tool is the powerful and unified command-line tool in Google Cloud. It comes preinstalled in Cloud Shell. You will notice its support for tab completion.You may be prompted to authenticate the first time you run a command. For more information, seegcloud command-line tool overview.

3. Run the following command in Cloud Shell to confirm that the gcloud command knows about your project:

gcloud config list project

Command output

[core]project = <PROJECT_ID>

If it is not, you can set it with this command:

gcloud config set project <PROJECT_ID>

Command output

Updated property [core/project].

Note: If you're completing this tutorial outside of Cloud Shell, followSet up Application Default Credentials.

3. Environment setup

Before you can begin using the Translation API, run the following command in Cloud Shell to enable the API:

gcloudservicesenabletranslate.googleapis.com

You should see something like this:

Operation "operations/..." finished successfully.

Now, you can use the Translation API!

Set the following environment variable (to be used in your application):

exportPROJECT_ID=$(gcloudconfigget-valuecore/project)echo"PROJECT_ID: $PROJECT_ID"

cd~

virtualenvvenv-translate

sourcevenv-translate/bin/activate

pipinstallipythongoogle-cloud-translate

...Installing collected packages: ..., ipython, google-cloud-translateSuccessfully installed ... google-cloud-translate-3.16.0 ...

Note: If you're setting up your own Python development environment outside of Cloud Shell, you can follow theseguidelines.

In the next steps, you'll use an interactive Python interpreter calledIPython, which you installed in the previous step. Start a session by runningipython in Cloud Shell:

ipython

You should see something like this:

Python 3.10.12 (main, Jul 29 2024, 16:56:48) [GCC 11.4.0]Type 'copyright', 'credits' or 'license' for more informationIPython 8.27.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python. Type '?' for help.In [1]:

fromosimportenvironfromgoogle.cloudimporttranslatePROJECT_ID=environ.get("PROJECT_ID","")assertPROJECT_IDPARENT=f"projects/{PROJECT_ID}"

5. Translate text

You can use the Translation API to translate text from one language to another. Text is translated using the Neural Machine Translation (NMT) model. If the NMT model is not supported for the requested language translation pair, the Phrase-Based Machine Translation (PBMT) model is used. For more on Google Translate and its translation models, see theNMT announcement post.

To translate text, copy the following code into your IPython session:

deftranslate_text(text:str,target_language_code:str)->translate.Translation:client=translate.TranslationServiceClient()response=client.translate_text(parent=PARENT,contents=[text],target_language_code=target_language_code,)returnresponse.translations[0]

Call the function to translate the same text in different languages:

text="Hello World!"target_languages=["tr","de","es","it","el","zh","ja","ko"]print(f"{text} ".center(50,"-"))fortarget_languageintarget_languages:translation=translate_text(text,target_language)source_language=translation.detected_language_codetranslated_text=translation.translated_textprint(f"{source_language} →{target_language} :{translated_text}")

You should get the following:

------------------ Hello World! ------------------en → tr : Selam Dünya!en → de : Hallo Welt!en → es : ¡Hola Mundo!en → it : Ciao mondo!en → el : Γεια σου Κόσμο!en → zh : 你好世界！en → ja : 「こんにちは世界」en → ko : 안녕하세요!

Summary

In this step, you were able to use the Translation API to translate text into multiple languages. Read more abouttranslating text.

6. Detect languages

You can also use the Translation API to detect the language of a text string.

Copy the following code into your IPython session:

defdetect_language(text:str)->translate.DetectedLanguage:client=translate.TranslationServiceClient()response=client.detect_language(parent=PARENT,content=text)returnresponse.languages[0]

Call the function to detect the language of different sentences:

sentences=["Selam Dünya!","Hallo Welt!","¡Hola Mundo!","Ciao mondo!","Γεια σου Κόσμο!","你好世界！","「こんにちは世界」","안녕하세요!",]forsentenceinsentences:language=detect_language(sentence)confidence=language.confidencelanguage_code=language.language_codeprint(f"Confidence:{confidence:4.0%}",f"Language:{language_code:5}",sentence,sep=" | ",)

You should get the following:

Confidence: 100% | Language: tr    | Selam Dünya!Confidence:  81% | Language: de    | Hallo Welt!Confidence: 100% | Language: es    | ¡Hola Mundo!Confidence: 100% | Language: it    | Ciao mondo!Confidence: 100% | Language: el    | Γεια σου Κόσμο!Confidence: 100% | Language: zh-CN | 你好世界！Confidence: 100% | Language: ja    | 「こんにちは世界」Confidence: 100% | Language: ko    | 안녕하세요!

Summary

In this step, you were able to detect the language of a piece of text using the Translation API. Read more aboutdetecting languages.

7. Congratulations!

You learned how to use the Translation API using Python!

Clean up

To clean up your development environment, from Cloud Shell:

• If you're still in your IPython session, go back to the shell:exit
• Stop using the Python virtual environment:deactivate
• Delete your virtual environment folder:cd ~ ; rm -rf ./venv-translate

To delete your Google Cloud project, from Cloud Shell:

• Retrieve your current project ID:PROJECT_ID=$(gcloud config get-value core/project)
• Make sure this is the project you want to delete:echo $PROJECT_ID
• Delete the project:gcloud projects delete $PROJECT_ID

Learn more

• Cloud Translation documentation:https://cloud.google.com/translate/docs
• Python on Google Cloud:https://cloud.google.com/python
• Cloud Client Libraries for Python:https://github.com/googleapis/google-cloud-python

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.