A Translator App, simple hack

muneer
Sat, 10 Jul 2021 17:30:24 +0000
Tutorials and DIY Guides

Creating a translator app is not easy and not straight forward specially when it comes to API solutions. Most translators will require a kind of payment or subscription if you really want to maintain your app.

In this tutorial, I try to show you a different way or a less known approach to solve the issue of translation in Thunkable.

The project requires a connection to a Google sheet so you need to make a new Google sheet and have four columns. I named them as:

LangFrom to store the country code of the language you want to translate from.

LangTo to store the country code of the language you want to translate to.

TextFrom is the text to be translated.

TextTo the translated text.

The sheet is simple and has only one single row. The first 3 columns are simple text columns.
The magic takes place in the fourth column. You will enter a Google sheet formula just as shown in the image.

The Thunkable app to demonstrate this is simple. You need to get input from the user for the first 3 columns and when you update the connected sheet, finally read the fourth column which has the translation required.

This approach does not require API keys or registrations and contains all the languages supported by Google Translate.

see attached a sample app that demonstrate the idea. Remember to create the Google sheet and connect it to the project and go to the blocks page to reconnect it so that it works.

Should you prefer to try it as a webapp first, here is the link (Not working atm)

Staff Edit: If you want to remix the app, or try it, you will need to create your own Google Sheet and follow the tutorial above (and connect it to the project). You will also need to fix the blocks (reconnect the data source blocks correctly)

8 posts - 6 participants