Apply Google Translate API for University Research Program

Google Translate API is now available commercially (usage is chargeable depending on how many characters of input). Fortunately if you’re a researcher (or university students doing thesis/dissertation) you may apply for University Research Program – apply here.

Before applying for the University Research Program, crate a project in the console.developers.google.com/project . Provide the complete billing first to the new project you created.

Then in the APIs & auth menu, turn the Translate API on.

However, University Research Program, in the you’re to abide these restrictions;

• The research program is for research purposes only. Commercial use is strictly forbidden.
• Participants may submit no more than 100,000 characters for translation each day. If your project requires more daily throughput, let us know in your proposal and we'll do our best to accommodate you.
• Publications presenting research that was done using resources provided by this program must include attribution to Google for providing those resources.
• The program may be used only by registered researchers and their teams, and access may not be shared with others.

Wait for few months for the approval process and you will get the approval email.

Upon the approval, you and your team will get 100,000 of characters for translation per day for FREE.

To embed the Translate API to your web application, you need to download the API code segment. The code and documentation is here https://developers.google.com/translate/v2/getting_started.

I did some customization for my web page. This is the workaround, I provide only the code segment (not completed). My server backend is in PHP.

<?php
//the function receive input text in Malay
function googletranslateAPI($text){
   $apiKey = 'this-is-ur-Google-Translate-API-KEY';
    //to get the Google-Translate-API-KEY, go to your Translate API project console 
    //source is Malay(ms) and target is English (en)

    $url = 'https://www.googleapis.com/language/translate/v2?key=' . $apiKey . '&q=' . rawurlencode($text) . '&source=ms&target=en';

    $handle = curl_init($url);
    curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    $response = curl_exec($handle);
    $responseDecoded = json_decode($response, true);
    $responseCode = curl_getinfo($handle, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);      //Here we fetch the HTTP response code
    curl_close($handle);

    if($responseCode != 200) {
        $output= 'Fetching translation failed! Server response code:' . $responseCode . '<br>';
        $output=$output. 'Error description: ' . $responseDecoded['error']['errors'][0]['message'];
    }

    else {
        //echo 'Source: ' . $text . '<br>';
        $output= $responseDecoded['data']['translations'][0]['translatedText'];
    }
    return $output;//this function will return the output translation which is in English

}

?>

By using the Google Translate Program, I managed to do the translation of Malay Proverb with the help of Google Translate.