googletrans-py

What it is and what it does

googletrans-py is a fork of the original googletrans library, updated to work with newer versions of httpx and httpcore. It provides a Python interface to Google Translate by reverse-engineering the web API, allowing you to translate text without needing an official API key or paying for a service. The package wraps HTTP requests to Google's translation endpoint and parses the responses.

The fork was created because the original project stalled at version 4.0.0rc1 (pre-release), and this version updates dependency compatibility. However, the maintainer explicitly states they have no intention to actively maintain the project and view it as a temporary workaround. Since the last release was over four years ago, there is significant risk that Google's service changes may have broken the underlying API calls.

Use it for:

• Quickly translate text snippets in a Python script without setting up Google Cloud credentials or handling billing.
• Build a simple chatbot or educational tool that needs to display content in multiple languages.
• Prototype a translation feature before committing to an official, paid API integration.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Provides free Google Translate API access for Python, enabling text translation without authentication or charges.

No. While the package is permissively licensed and has no known vulnerabilities, it is dormant (last release 1584 days ago), explicitly unmaintained, and reverse-engineers an undocumented API that Google may have changed. Use the official Google Cloud Translation API instead, or choose an actively maintained alternative if cost is the concern.

Install

googletrans-py on PyPI

pip install googletrans-py

uv add googletrans-py

poetry add googletrans-py

Installing googletrans-py

Before you install

High install friction due to no runtime dependencies listed, but maintenance is dormant—last release was 1584 days ago. The package explicitly states the maintainer has no intention to actively maintain it and views this as a temporary solution.

License in practice

MIT license (permissive) means you can use, modify, and distribute the package freely with minimal restrictions, though you should retain the license notice.

Quickstart

pip install googletrans-py

from googletrans import Translator

translator = Translator()
result = translator.translate('Hello', src_language='en', dest_language='es')
print(result['text'])

Requires Python 3.7 or later. Google's translation service may rate-limit or block requests; this package reverse-engineers an undocumented API and is not officially supported by Google.

Verify before relying

• Whether the package currently works against Google's live translation service or if the API endpoint has changed since the last release.
• How reliably it handles rate limiting and whether it includes retry logic or backoff strategies.
• Whether httpx compatibility improvements mentioned in the description actually resolve all dependency conflicts in modern environments.

Package facts

Evidence: googletrans-py-4.0.0.tar.gz

Keywords: google, translate, translator

Tags

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