Google Translate Activity not working anymore

Question

I wrote a program that invokes Google Translator android application via Intent.ACTION_VIEW. The problem is that invoking the Google Translator App does not work anymore, although it did once.

The code is identical to the code given here:

Returning Translated Text from Google Translate Activity

(yes, I tried to replace my code by that code, the Google Translator App behaves as if it does not receive any data.)

Currently I cannot specify the text and the two languages. The best I can do is to use ACTION_SEND, but it ignores the two languages:

        Intent i = new Intent();
        i.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
        i.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "What is going on?");
        i.putExtra("key_text_input", "What time is it?");
        i.putExtra("key_text_output", "");
        i.putExtra("key_language_from", "en");
        i.putExtra("key_language_to", "es");
        i.putExtra("key_suggest_translation", "");
        i.putExtra("key_from_floating_window", false);
        i.setComponent(new ComponentName("com.google.android.apps.translate",
            "com.google.android.apps.translate.translation.TranslateActivity"));

What actually happened when I ran this code was: the Google Translator asked me if I want to translate from English and translated "What is going on?" to French.

So: how do I pass the languages to the Google Translate App now?

Answer 1

UPDATE:

The following code works with the new version of Google Translate Application:

        Intent i = new Intent();
        i.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
        i.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "What is going on?");
        i.putExtra("key_text_input", "Oh my God! What is going on here?");
        //i.putExtra("key_text_output", "");
        i.putExtra("from", "en");
        i.putExtra("to", "zh-CN");
        //i.putExtra("key_suggest_translation", "");
        //i.putExtra("key_from_floating_window", false);
        i.setComponent(new ComponentName("com.google.android.apps.translate",
                "com.google.android.apps.translate.HomeActivity"));

As you can see, this is the standard ACTION_SEND with additional parameters "to" and "from".

There's a gotcha: "key_text_input" takes preference over Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, and "to" and "from" work only with "key_text_input".

If you have an impression that no data is passed (at all), maybe it is because you use 3-character language codes instead of 2-character ones. But the codes for Chinese are zh-CN and zh-TW.

My previous post:

The action and the parameter names have changed.

        Intent i = new Intent();
        i.setAction("com.google.android.apps.translate.action.QUERY");
        i.putExtra("key_text_input", "Oh my God! What is going on?");
        i.putExtra("key_text_output", "");
        i.putExtra("from", "en");
        i.putExtra("to", "zh-CN");
        i.putExtra("key_suggest_translation", "");
        i.putExtra("key_from_floating_window", false);
        i.setComponent(new ComponentName("com.google.android.apps.translate",
            "com.google.android.apps.translate.translation.TranslateActivity"));

Answer 2

They have changed it once again:

            intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
            intent.setType("text/plain");
            intent.setPackage("com.google.android.apps.translate");

            intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, text);

UPDATE: It is possible to pass the languages if you pack the text and the languages into an URI:

            intent = new Intent();
            intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
            intent.setPackage("com.google.android.apps.translate");

            Uri uri = new Uri.Builder()
                    .scheme("http")
                    .authority("translate.google.com")
                    .path("/m/translate")
                    .appendQueryParameter("q", "c'est l'meunier Mathurin qui caresse les filles au tic-tac du moulin")
                    .appendQueryParameter("tl", "pl") // target language
                    .appendQueryParameter("sl", "fr") // source language
                    .build();
            //intent.setType("text/plain"); //not needed, but possible
            intent.setData(uri);