Viva Translate - Real-time translation copilot for your browser

Join Discord for support

Receive real-time translated subtitles of your browser audio for Google Meets, YouTube, and more.

Things you can do with Viva Translate:

• Talk to your international coworkers 🧑‍💻
• Talk to your grandmother abroad 💜
• Talk to your lover abroad ❤️
• Translate snippets of the web 🌐
• Translate YouTube videos ▶️
• Translate live streams 🦦
• Translate obscure movies in other languages 🎥

Note: This open-source Chrome extension prioritizes translation accuracy over cost. Luckily, the model providers we use have generous free tiers!

Requirements

• Basic understanding of using the terminal and Node.js
• Chrome-based browser
• API Keys (see step 3 for details)
  • DeepL API Key for translations (500,000 characters free / month, as of Sep 18, 2024)
  • Gladia API Key for transcriptions (10 hours free / month, as of Sep 18, 2024)
  • OpenAI API Key for AI summaries ($100 free / month, as of Sep 18, 2024)

For language translation, we found that DeepL + Gladia performed the best for accuracy and speed. OpenAI is used for AI summaries. You may feel free to switch these out with other API providers!

Features

• Supported languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Japanese, and Chinese
• Translate audio on any website such as YouTube, Twitch, and others.
• Translate your Google Meets meetings
• Highlight text on any page to translate
• Save your transcripts and summaries

Easy Set Up (~10 min)

10 minutes of setup for a lifetime of translations :)

Step 1: Download the Project

Clone this repository using git clone git@github.com:just-an-experiment/viva-translate.git

Alternatively, you can download the latest zip package and unzip it.

Step 2: Download Node Dependencies

To install project dependencies, you can use pnpm (recommended) or npm:

pnpm install
# or
npm install

Step 3: Add API Keys and Environment Variables

This project uses DeepL for translations, OpenAI for transcription summaries, and Gladia for speech-to-text transcriptions.

Here is how to get your API Keys from each provider in order to run the project:

• DeepL
  • Create a developer account - it'll ask for a credit card but it won't charge you upfront
  • Get API Key from https://www.deepl.com/en/your-account/keys
• OpenAI
  • Create a developer account
  • Get API Key from https://platform.openai.com/api-keys
• Gladia
  • Create a developer account
  • Get API Key from https://app.gladia.io/account

Before compiling the project, you should configure the environment variables. Copy the .env.example file, rename it to .env, and replace the placeholder values with your own:

ENVIRONMENT="development" or "production"
DEEPL_API_KEY=DEEPL API Key for translations
OPENAI_KEY=OpenAI API Key for AI Summaries using gpt-4o-mini
GLADIA_KEY=Gladia.ai API Key for transcriptions
MAX_TEXT_LENGTH=Maximum text length for translations in popup and highlight to translate (Recommended value is 7500)

Step 4: Build the Extension

To generate the dist folder with the extension files and a distribution zip file, run:

pnpm run build
# or
npm run build

Step 5: Load the Extension in Chrome

1. Open the Chrome Extensions page.
2. On the top right, enable Developer Mode by toggling the switch.
3. On the upper left, click Load unpacked and select the dist folder. Alternatively, you can drag and drop the dist folder onto the extensions page.

Step 6: Pin your extension

Click the extensions icon in the upper right corner of your Chrome browser. Click the pin icon near the Viva Translate logo.

Step 7: Try it out

1. For any audio like a YouTube video: click your pinned extension and press 'Captions'.
2. For Google Meets: go to any Google Meets meeting and Viva should automatically start up. You can toggle this on/off in the pinned extension.

Contribute

Submit a pull request in this repository if you'd like to contribute!

Join Discord for support