eth: Very basic Emacs translation helpers

Goal

eth is built on top of google-translate. It just allows for an additional editing of the candidates proposed by google-translate. Those candidates are displayed either in the minibuffer or a dedicated side-buffer, and are then simply inserted in the main text after editing.

eth is not a Computer Assisted Translation software.

How it works

In its current state, eth just takes the next sentence in your document, highlights it, and proposes a translation in a dedicated buffer. Once you’re done editing this candidate, the final translation replaces the original sentence in your original document.

eth has just one function at this stage: eth-translate-next-sentence. It can be bound to a convenient shortcut and called in any buffer and any mode.

Suggested settings

Once eth is downloaded and put within your path, add the following in your init file:

;; google-translate is required:
(use-package google-translate
  :ensure t
  :init
  (require 'google-translate)
  (require 'google-translate-smooth-ui)
  :config
  (defun google-translate--search-tkk ()
    "Search TKK."
    (list 430675 2721866130)))

;; An example for the eth part:
(require 'eth)
(global-set-key "\C-cT" 'eth-translate-next-sentence)
(setq eth-source-language "en")
(setq eth-target-language "fr")
(setq eth-edit-in-minibuffer-p nil)

Also, remember that the variable sentence-end-double-space will have a huge impact on what is detected as a proper sentence.

Future improvements

• [ ] Allow more general segments than just sentences.
• [ ] Allow more major modes than just text-mode in side buffer.
• [ ] Add a cancel option in side buffer (as C-c C-k in org-capture buffers)