🌍 googletrans-python

Google Translate in one line of Python. No API key. No dependencies. Just works.

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Why This Exists

Every other Google Translate library is either broken, bloated, or requires an API key.

This one doesn't.

import googletrans as gt

gt.translate("Hello, World!", "ko")
# → '안녕하세요, 월드!'

That's it. No setup, no tokens, no httpx, no requests. Just the standard library.

Installation

pip install googletrans-python

Usage

import googletrans as gt

# English → Korean
gt.translate("Good morning", "ko")
# → '좋은 아침'

# English → Japanese
gt.translate("Good morning", "ja")
# → 'おはようございます'

# English → French
gt.translate("Good morning", "fr")
# → 'Bonjour'

# Auto-detect source language
gt.translate("Bonjour le monde", "en")
# → 'Hello world'

# Specify source language explicitly
gt.translate("こんにちは", "en", from_language="ja")
# → 'Hello'

API

googletrans.translate(
    to_translate: str,           # Text to translate
    to_language: str,            # Target language code
    from_language: str = "auto"  # Source language (auto-detected by default)
) -> str

Supported Languages

All Google Translate language codes are supported. Common ones:

Code	Language	Code	Language	Code	Language
en	English	ko	Korean	ja	Japanese
zh-CN	Chinese (Simplified)	zh-TW	Chinese (Traditional)	fr	French
de	German	es	Spanish	pt	Portuguese
ru	Russian	ar	Arabic	hi	Hindi
vi	Vietnamese	th	Thai	id	Indonesian

How It Works

No REST API. No OAuth. No client library.

It hits Google Translate's mobile web endpoint (translate.google.com/m) and parses the result — the same page your browser renders when you visit Google Translate on a phone.

urllib.request → translate.google.com/m → regex parse → translated text

The entire implementation is one function, ~15 lines of code, with zero external dependencies.

Comparison

Library	API Key	Dependencies	Working (2025)
googletrans-python	❌ Not needed	0	✅
googletrans 4.0.0-rc1	❌	httpx	⚠️ Frequently broken
google-cloud-translate	✅ Required	grpcio, google-auth, ...	✅ (paid)
deep-translator	❌	requests, beautifulsoup4	⚠️ Rate-limited

Limitations

Be aware of these tradeoffs — this is a scraping-based approach, not an official API:

• Rate limiting — Google may throttle or block IPs making too many requests
• No batch translation — One call per string
• No detection API — Can't return detected language metadata (auto-detect still works for translation)
• Unofficial — Google can change the page structure at any time

For production workloads with high volume, consider the official Cloud Translation API.

License

MIT

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_{If this saved you from setting up a GCP project just to translate one string, consider leaving a ⭐}