Translate phrases with URL from X#/VO programs

[ic2]

For 15 years my program had the option to send a URL for translating phrases using:

http://api.microsofttranslator.com

for which we had an aippID. Recently that stopped working. I guess I can reapply on https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/prici ... ranslator/ where 2 million characters/month is still free. Disadvantage is that including it in a client version with my own ID (easier than letting each user apply for one), I don't control the number of translations and 1 (or all) user(s) can exceed my limit. Although I've taken that risk and this never gave an issue the past 15 years.

Without an account you can use URL's to get a translation like

https://translate.google.com/?text=hello%20world&tl=es

but that will give you the Google Translate page, not a result that can be used in a program like a http page with somewhere the translation in it.

Does anyone know an alternative for a subscribed version where I can get the result from a resulting http page? It is for small parts of text only, sometimes a few words.

Dick

[ArneOrtlinghaus]

We have included DeepL as a translator tool for customers that want to have the licence for. They have to order their own access and receive the regular payment infos. Then they can insert their ID-information into a configuration window in our program and the program generates the correct ID. (DeepL must be integrated via Webservices, so it is not what you are looking for)

The same is valid for Google Maps. Originally we allowed all customers to use our ID, but then we received payments of many thousands of Euros generated by customer searches. So it was necessary to change quickly. Now the customers are already used to organize those types of services.

The times of cheap Internet services are over We will have the same when beginning to integrate AI possibilities.

Arne

[ic2]

Hello Arne,

That sounds like an unpleasant surprise, having those extra charges. Although I am usually not positive about anything Microsoft is doing, the Bing translation service worked well and I think the worse that could happen, if customers would have used it too often, is that I and other users would be out of translation requests for the rest of the month. And apparently, I can still apply for a generous number of translated phrases for free via Azure. But as many on line translation requests are free anyway it would be even more handy if someone figured out how to call these from a program and retrieve the translations from the HTTP.

I agree with you about AI. It is not uncommon to start gaining users by allowing them to use it for free followed by an attempt to charge for it somehow. Which doesn't always work! But it's a kind of sport for more than a few developers to try to avoid paying the tech giants by finding a -legal- free way to achieve the same result.

Dick

[ArneOrtlinghaus]

It is interesting that so many public services offering gratis possibilities have to reduce their efforts, because chatbots generate so much more traffic and resource usage. And these chatbots come often from AI agents that train models or search for answers made by AI requests.

Wikipedia said some months ago that they are suffering much under these requests and they take more resources than human requests. They aren't even able to block anymore requests, because the companies use different bots from many different machines to get all data.

So, the easiest way is to try to limit access to simple user access via a Web Browser.

Out of topic:

I heard from a Jazz musician few time ago that his group posted self-written songs on Spotify and it took only few days that songs with very similar ideas appeared.

Most probably there are bots working continously, looking for new songs with new ideas, and then they are remade with AI and published under new names.

Arne