Uses the google translate api to translate a string between languages, via any intermediate

bibberish.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
# translate text on the command line

require 'rubygems'
require 'open-uri'
require 'json'

# Usage: $0 from:to phrase...
#
# the first argument defines the languages to convert from and to.  If only one
# is specified, then the first is auto detected.  a missing language goes
# to the default language (english).
# e.g.
# english:french          =>  translates english text to french
# dutch                   =>  translates text to dutch from whatever the text
#                             appears to be
# :spanish                =>  converts default (english) to spanish
# german:spanish:english  =>  translates german to english, via spanish
# :danish:                =>  translates english to dutch and back to english
#
# all further arguments are joined into a sentence and taken to the phrase
# that you want to convert.

DEFAULT_LANGUAGE = "english"
LANGUAGES = {
  "arabic" => "ar",     "bulgarian" => "bg", "catalan" => "ca",   "chinese" => "zh-CN",
  "croatian" => "hr",   "czech" => "cs",     "danish" => "da",    "dutch" => "nl",
  "english" => "en",    "filipino" => "tl",  "finnish" => "fi",   "french" => "fr",
  "german" => "de",     "greek" => "el",     "hebrew" => "iw",    "hindi" => "hi",
  "indonesian" => "id", "italian" => "it",   "japanese" => "ja",  "korean" => "ko",
  "latvian" => "lv",    "lithuanian" => "lt","norwegian" => "no", "polish" => "pl",
  "portuguese" => "pt", "romanian" => "ro",  "russian" => "ru",   "serbian" => "sr",
  "slovak" => "sk",     "slovenian" => "sl", "spanish" => "es",   "swedish" => "sv",
  "ukrainian" => "uk",  "vietnamese" => "vi"}

def display_usage_and_exit
  $stderr.puts "$0 [from:to] [phrase]"
  exit 5
end

def display_languages_and_exit
  $stderr.puts "Invalid language.  Allowed languages are: #{LANGUAGES.keys.join ", "}"
  exit 10
end

def translate(from, to, text)
  url = URI.escape "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/language/translate?v=1.0&q=#{text}&langpair=#{from}|#{to}"
  response = JSON.load(open(url))
  if response["responseStatus"] == 200
    response["responseData"]["translatedText"]
  else
    $stderr.puts "[ ERROR ] The webserver returned an error"
    $stderr.puts "[REQUEST] #{url}"
    $stderr.puts "[RESPOND] #{response.inspect}"
    nil
  end
end

# quit unless enough arguments are provided
display_usage_and_exit unless ARGV.length >= 2

langs = ARGV[0].split(":").collect do |l|
  if l == ""
    LANGUAGES[DEFAULT_LANGUAGE]
  elsif LANGUAGES[l]
    LANGUAGES[l]
  elsif LANGUAGES.values.include? l
    l
  else
    display_languages_and_exit
  end
end

langs.insert(0, "auto") if langs.length == 1
langs.push(LANGUAGES[DEFAULT_LANGUAGE]) if ARGV[0][-1].chr == ":"

input = ARGV[1..-1].join " "
(0..(langs.length-2)).each do |i|
  if input = translate(langs[i], langs[i + 1], input)
    puts "#{langs[i]} => #{langs[i+1]}: #{input}"
  else
    exit 15
  end
end

exit 0