Crow Translate is a simple and lightweight translator programmed in C++ / Qt that allows to translate and speak text using Google, Yandex and Bing translate API. You may also be interested in my library QOnlineTranslator used in this project.

• Screenshots
• Features
• Default keyboard shortcuts
• CLI commands
• D-Bus API
• Dependencies
• Third-party
• Installation
• Building
• Localization

_{Screenshots: OS: Arch Linux | Desktop environment: Plasma | Theme: Breeze | Icons: Papirus | Wallpaper: Catalina}

_{Screenshots: OS: Windows 10 | Theme: default | Wallpaper: WallpapersCraft}

• Translate and speak text in any application that supports text selection
• Support 117 different languages
• Low memory consumption (~20MB)
• Highly customizable shortcuts
• Command-line interface with rich options
• D-Bus API
• Available for Linux and Windows

You can change them in the settings. Some key sequences may not be available due to OS limitations.

Wayland does not support global shortcuts registration, but you can use D-Bus to bind actions in the system settings. For desktop environments that support additional applications actions (KDE, for example) you will see them predefined in the system shortcut settings. You can also use them for X11 sessions, but you need to disable global shortcuts registration in the application settings to avoid conflicts.

The program also has a console interface.

Usage: crow [options] text

Note: If you do not pass startup arguments to the program, the GUI starts.

Currently available only for global shortcuts.

io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate
└── /io/crow_translate/CrowTranslate/MainWindow
    ├── method void io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.copyTranslatedSelection()
    ├── method void io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.open()
    ├── method void io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.speakSelection()
    ├── method void io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.speakTranslatedSelection()
    ├── method void io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.stopSpeaking()
    ├── method void io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.translateSelection()
    └── method void io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.quit()

For example, you can show main window using dbus-send:

dbus-send --type=method_call --dest=io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate /io/crow_translate/CrowTranslate/MainWindow io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.open

Or via qdbus:

qdbus io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate /io/crow_translate/CrowTranslate/MainWindow io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.open
# or shorter
qdbus io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate /io/crow_translate/CrowTranslate/MainWindow open

Build: qt5-base qt5-multimedia qt5-x11extras qt5-tools

Run: qt5-base qt5-multimedia qt5-x11extras gst-plugins-good openssl

Build: qt5-default qt5-qmake libqt5x11extras5-dev qttools5-dev-tools qtmultimedia5-dev qtbase5-dev qtbase5-dev-tools

Run: gstreamer1.0-fluendo-mp3 qtgstreamer-plugins-qt5 gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-alsa gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio libqt5multimedia5-plugins

Build: gcc-c++ libqt5-linguist-devel libqt5-qtbase-devel libqt5-qtmultimedia-devel libqt5-qtx11extras-devel

Build: qt5-tools-devel qt5-multimedia-devel qt5-svg-devel qt5-x11extras-devel

Run: qt5-base qt5-x11extras qt5-multimedia libstdc++ libgcc glibc libx11

This project uses the following third-party libraries:

• QOnlineTranslator - provides free usage of Google, Yandex and Bing translate API.
• QGitTag - uses the GitHub API to provide information about releases.
• QHotkey - provides global shortcuts for desktop platforms.
• QTaskbarControl - allows to create a taskbar/launcher progress for all desktop platforms.
• SingleApplication - prevents launch of multiple application instances.

Therefore, if you want to clone this project, you need to use the --recursive option:

git clone --recursive [email protected]:crow-translate/crow-translate.git

or you can initialize these modules later:

git clone [email protected]:crow-translate/crow-translate.git
git submodule init
git submodule update

Only Linux supports icon theming. Windows use Papirus icons.

FlagKit icons are used for flags.

📦 Releases page

📦 Scoop package

sudo scoop install crow-translate -g

📦 Stable version in AUR

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/crow-translate.git
cd crow-translate
makepkg -si

📦 Git version in AUR

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/crow-translate-git.git
cd crow-translate-git
makepkg -si

📦 Releases page

📦 Fedora Copr

sudo dnf copr enable faezebax/crow-translate
sudo dnf install crow-translate

📦 Fedora Copr

sudo yum copr enable faezebax/crow-translate
sudo yum install crow-translate

📦 Tumbleweed repository

sudo zypper install crow-translate

📦 Open Build Service

📦 Solus repository

sudo eopkg it crow-translate

You can use the automatic script that builds Crow Translate and creates a package for your distribution:

cd dist/unix
./create-package.sh

Than you can install it as usual. The script will tell you where the package will be after the making. Currently, only Arch Linux, Debian and their derivatives are supported.

You can build Crow Translate by using the following commands:

qmake # Or qmake-qt5 in some distributions
make
make clean

You will then get a binary named crow.

• PORTABLE_MODE - Enable portable functionality. If you create file named settings.ini in the app folder and Crow will store the configuration in it. It also adds the “Portable Mode” option to the application settings, which does the same.

Build parameters are passed at the qmake stage: qmake "DEFINES += PORTABLE_MODE".

To help with localization you can use Transifex or translate files in data/translations with Qt Linguist directly. To add a new language, make a request on the Transifex page or copy data/translations/crow.ts to data/translations/crow_<ISO 639-1 language code>.ts, translate it and send a pull request.