Argos Translate Documentation

Argos Translate is an open-source offline translation library written in Python. It utilizes OpenNMT for translations, SentencePiece for tokenization, Stanza for sentence boundary detection, and PyQt for its GUI.

It can be used in three ways:

1. As a Python library for programmatic integration.
2. As a Command Line Interface (CLI) for quick translations.
3. As a GUI application.

Key features include:

• Language Model Packages: Supports installing .argosmodel zip archives containing translation data.
• Automatic Pivoting: If a direct translation between two languages is not installed, Argos Translate can automatically pivot through an intermediate language (e.g., translating es ➔ fr using es ➔ en and en ➔ fr models) to enable translation between a wider variety of languages.

To launch the graphical user interface for Argos Translate, execute the following command in your terminal:

argos-translate-gui

If you installed via snap, a .desktop file should be available in your desktop menu.

If you have manually downloaded language pair models (from argospm or the argospm-index GitHub), follow these steps to install them:

1. Run argos-translate-gui.
2. Click on the Manage Packages menu item.
3. Click on the Install package file button.
4. Navigate to and select your .argosmodel file, then click Open.
5. Repeat for all downloaded files.
6. Close the Manage Packages window using the X in the top right.

If you prefer to install from the source repository, follow these steps to set up a virtual environment and install in editable mode:

1. Clone the repository.
2. Create and activate a virtual environment.
3. Install the package using pip install -e .

git clone https://github.com/argosopentech/argos-translate.git
cd argos-translate
virtualenv env
source env/bin/activate
pip install -e .

Argos Translate provides peer-to-peer distribution options via BitTorrent for downloading language packages or library files. You can choose between standard torrent files or BitTorrent v2 compatible files depending on your client's support.

##### [Argos-Translate-LibreTranslate-2022-04-30.zip.torrent](https://github.com/argosopentech/argos-translate/raw/master/p2p/Argos-Translate-LibreTranslate-2022-04-30.zip.torrent)
##### [Argos-Translate-LibreTranslate-2022-04-30.torrent (requires BitTorrent v2)](https://github.com/argosopentech/argos-translate/raw/master/p2p/Argos-Translate-LibreTranslate-2022-04-30.torrent)

To add new translation capabilities, follow these steps:

1. Update the remote index: argospm update
2. Search for available pairs: argospm search
3. Install the desired pair: argospm install <package_name>

Example for Turkish to English: argospm install translate-tr_en

To execute the unit tests for the project, use the pytest command in the root directory.

pytest tests

To uninstall a language pair model:

1. Run argos-translate-gui.
2. Click on the Manage Packages menu item.
3. Click on the trash can icon located beside the pair you wish to remove.
4. Close the Manage Packages window using the X in the top right.

You can enable tab completion for the argospm command by downloading the completion script to your Bash completion directory.

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/argosopentech/argos-translate/master/scripts/completion.bash > /etc/bash_completion.d/argospm.bash

The GUI uses two text boxes: the left box contains the source text, and the right box displays the translation.

Workflow Example (Vietnamese to English):

1. Set the left dropdown menu to Vietnamese.
2. Set the right dropdown menu to English.
3. Replace the default text in the left text box with your source text (use CTRL+a to select all and CTRL+v to paste).
4. Wait for the translation to appear in the right text box.

Note: If the output looks too similar to the input, verify that you have selected the correct origin language.

You can install the core Argos Translate library using pip from PyPI.

To install the Graphical User Interface (GUI), install the argostranslategui package.

You can download language pair models (averaging 100MB each) directly within the application:

1. Run argos-translate-gui.
2. Click on the Manage Packages menu item.
3. Click on the Download packages button.
4. Click the down arrow beside the desired language pair.
5. Wait for the hourglass icon to change into a check mark icon.
6. Repeat for other pairs.
7. Close the Download packages window and the Manage Packages window using the X in the top right.