CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptreactjsapigoogle-api
tdammon
tdammon

Reputation: 589

Google API won't translate foreign letters.

I am building an app that uses Google API to translate text. The app works fine however if I try to translate a word that uses a foreign key, På, for example the API request seems to omit the 'å' and respond with an answer of P. This happens with all words with non-English letters.

To make things even stranger I build a small web extension that uses a window.addEventListener to grab a word from a webpage. Using this method to send the words to the API does not cause a problem.

Here is the code that works. The content script selects a word and sends it to the background.js. The background script takes that word and sends it to the popup window. On a button click the selected word gets sent to Google API and the translation is sent back.

Content Script:

window.addEventListener('mouseup', checkWord);

function checkWord() {

    let word = window.getSelection().toString();
    console.log(word);
    if(word.length > 0) {
        let message = {
            text: word,
        }
        chrome.runtime.sendMessage(word)
    }

}

Background Script:

chrome.runtime.onMessage.addListener(receiver);

function receiver(request, sender, sendResponse) {

    console.log(request);
    word = request;
}

Finally my popup page function which is called on a button click:

function sendToAPI() {
    let bgpage = chrome.extension.getBackgroundPage();
    let word = bgpage.word;
    console.log(word)
    if(word.length> 0 && word.length< 100){
    $.ajax({
        type: 'GET',
        url: `https://translation.googleapis.com/language/translate/v2?q=${word}&target=en&source=no&key=${API_KEY}`,       
    }).then(function(response) {      
            translated =response.data.translations[0].translatedText;
            $('.word').empty();
            $('.word').append(`${word}  |  ${translated}`);

            return translated;

        }).catch(function(err) {

            sendReverse();
        })
    }  
}

Here is the part of the other code that is not working. req.query.q is the word that is pasted into an input field. Additionally I can remove the `req.query.q and paste the word directly into this space and the API call still does not work.

//GET request to Google Translate API
router.get('/', (req,res)=>{
    console.log(req.query);
    axios.get(`https://translation.googleapis.com/language/translate/v2?q=${req.query.q}&target=${req.query.target}&source=${req.query.source}&key=${process.env.GOOGLE_API_KEY}`)
    .then(response => {
        if(req.query.q == response.data.data.translations[0].translatedText){
            res.send('reverse')
        } else {
            console.log(response.data.data)
            res.send(response.data)
        }    
    }).catch(err=> {
        console.log(err)
    })
})

Upvotes: 0

Views: 183

Answers (1)

Peter B
Peter B

Reputation: 24157

You need to properly encode the special characters with encodeURIComponent(), either like this:

....?q=${encodeURIComponent(word)}....

or separated:

var encodedWord = encodeURIComponent(word);
//
....?q=${encodedWord}....

Upvotes: 2

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