Tutorial: Translating JSON Dictionary Values using Python and Google Translate

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In this tutorial, we’re going to learn how to translate values in a JSON dictionary from English to Spanish using Python and the googletrans library, a free and unlimited python library that implemented Google Translate API.

Requirements

To complete this tutorial, you’ll need the following:

• Python 3 installed on your system.
• Access to a Jupyter Notebook, Google Colab, or a Python script file.
• Internet access, as we’ll be using the online Google Translate service.

Step 1: Install googletrans Library

The first step is to install the googletrans library. You can do this with pip:

!pip install googletrans==3.1.0a0

Step 2: Import Required Libraries

Next, we’ll import the necessary libraries. We’ll need the json library to work with JSON data, the googletrans library to translate text, and the re library to identify placeholders in our text:

import json
import re
from googletrans import Translator

Step 3: Initialize the Translator

We will then initialize our Translator object from googletrans:

translator = Translator()

Step 4: Create Our Translation Function

Next, we create a function that will take an English JSON dictionary and return a Spanish JSON dictionary. Our function will iterate through each key-value pair in the English dictionary, translate the value to Spanish, and store it in the Spanish dictionary with the same key:

def translate_dict(en_dict):
    es_dict = {}
    for key, value in en_dict.items():
        # Identify placeholders
        placeholders = re.findall(r'{.*?}', value)
        
        # Remove placeholders from the original string
        for placeholder in placeholders:
            value = value.replace(placeholder, '')

        # Translate the string without placeholders
        translation = translator.translate(value, dest='es')
        
        # Add the placeholders back to the translated string
        translated_value = translation.text
        for placeholder in placeholders:
            translated_value += ' ' + placeholder
        
        es_dict[key] = translated_value.strip()
    return es_dict

In this function, we first identify placeholders (text within {}). We then remove the placeholders from the original string, translate the rest of the string, and then add the placeholders back to the translated string.

Step 5: Use the Function

Finally, we can use our function to translate an English JSON dictionary:

en_dict = {
    "000a1a966f5e5aba0e7c": "Update Settings",
    "00a60ec8ca21b351da90": "Terms Url",
    #...
    # include all the keys and values you want to translate
    #...
}

# Get the Spanish translation
es_dict = translate_dict(en_dict)

# Print the Spanish dictionary
print(json.dumps(es_dict, ensure_ascii=False))

Conclusion

Congratulations! You’ve just created a Python script to translate the values in a JSON dictionary using Google Translate. This can be extremely useful in applications such as internationalizing a web application, translating user content, and much more. Happy coding!