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Did some writing, and some coding
Jan. 27th, 2013 10:44 pm Coding for home use, that is.
This is all a rather silly little addition to my Gloranthan output. Glorantha is the place with Ducks, and while we all know that they speak the local human language with a silly accent, it occurred to me that they probably speak their own language as well. Then I wondered what that would sound like, and how I'd represent it in writing, and I got chatting to some friends on Facebook about the subject. At the same time, another friend was bemoaning the shortage of articles for his magazine (I'm the proof-reader, and I had a very easy job this issue). So a few hours later, he had an article (it'll be out in Issue 15), and I had a little Google Doc spreadsheet that would translate English to Duck.
Or rather, I had a Google Doc that would do a rather messy job of the second part of the translation: translating English to Polish is still "here's a link to an online translator, paste the result in here". So to start with, I wanted it less messy. I tried exporting the thing to Excel, and it still looked messy. Time to pull out the big(ger) guns - I set up a page on my own website, and started writing HTML and ColdFusion code. Nothing very complex, just an input form and a bit of text manipulation, though Dreamweaver has expired, and Eclipse wouldn't start up for some reason, so I was editing in Notepad.
Next.... it's all very well saying "paste the output from a translation utility here", but I rather fancied automating that, too. I wonder if the online translators have APIs? Yes, they do! I can go for either Google or what was Babel Fish and is now Bing i.e. Microsoft.
Starting off with the Microsoft product, they explain the various interfaces I can use, and that to do so, I'll need a key. I can apply for one of these easily, just log in with my Microsoft account. I'm pretty sure I had one of those, once, but of course I can't remember the password. No problem, hit the password reset link, and an email arrives so I can change it. I change it. I make a note of the new password. I log in - no, it seems my password is wrong. I don't think so, I'd been copy-pasting. OK, use the reset link again. It's expired/used - fair enough, ask for another. I try to use the same password I have a note of, and it says I've used that before. True, I have, but in that case why can't I log in using it? I change again, make a note again. Still can't log in. Wander around their help system for a while looking for a suitable place to contact and administrator, and give up.
On to Google. Yes, looks like a nice API. I need to register for a key, but my Google account is something I use all the time, so no trouble logging in. Pick the API I want to activate - ah. Use of the Translate API isn't free. "$20 per 1 M characters of text, where the charges are adjusted in proportion to the number of characters actually provided." This probably isn't going to cost me much, and I can cap it anyway, but I may stop and think about this.
This is all a rather silly little addition to my Gloranthan output. Glorantha is the place with Ducks, and while we all know that they speak the local human language with a silly accent, it occurred to me that they probably speak their own language as well. Then I wondered what that would sound like, and how I'd represent it in writing, and I got chatting to some friends on Facebook about the subject. At the same time, another friend was bemoaning the shortage of articles for his magazine (I'm the proof-reader, and I had a very easy job this issue). So a few hours later, he had an article (it'll be out in Issue 15), and I had a little Google Doc spreadsheet that would translate English to Duck.
Or rather, I had a Google Doc that would do a rather messy job of the second part of the translation: translating English to Polish is still "here's a link to an online translator, paste the result in here". So to start with, I wanted it less messy. I tried exporting the thing to Excel, and it still looked messy. Time to pull out the big(ger) guns - I set up a page on my own website, and started writing HTML and ColdFusion code. Nothing very complex, just an input form and a bit of text manipulation, though Dreamweaver has expired, and Eclipse wouldn't start up for some reason, so I was editing in Notepad.
Next.... it's all very well saying "paste the output from a translation utility here", but I rather fancied automating that, too. I wonder if the online translators have APIs? Yes, they do! I can go for either Google or what was Babel Fish and is now Bing i.e. Microsoft.
Starting off with the Microsoft product, they explain the various interfaces I can use, and that to do so, I'll need a key. I can apply for one of these easily, just log in with my Microsoft account. I'm pretty sure I had one of those, once, but of course I can't remember the password. No problem, hit the password reset link, and an email arrives so I can change it. I change it. I make a note of the new password. I log in - no, it seems my password is wrong. I don't think so, I'd been copy-pasting. OK, use the reset link again. It's expired/used - fair enough, ask for another. I try to use the same password I have a note of, and it says I've used that before. True, I have, but in that case why can't I log in using it? I change again, make a note again. Still can't log in. Wander around their help system for a while looking for a suitable place to contact and administrator, and give up.
On to Google. Yes, looks like a nice API. I need to register for a key, but my Google account is something I use all the time, so no trouble logging in. Pick the API I want to activate - ah. Use of the Translate API isn't free. "$20 per 1 M characters of text, where the charges are adjusted in proportion to the number of characters actually provided." This probably isn't going to cost me much, and I can cap it anyway, but I may stop and think about this.
