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When browsing the web with various inputs and other keyboard actions, traveling from the keyboard to the touchpad to right click is fairly obnoxious.

Google Chrome offers a "Translate to English" option in it's right click menu, something I find myself having to use often as I browse sites with English and another language.

The context menu for Google Chrome when right-clicking on no tangibly clickable object

Is it possible to invoke this option via a keyboard shortcut, or other non-mouse based method?

Jason Salaz
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  • I've been browsing some Japanese-language video game portals recently, and for whatever reason the offer to translate doesn't appear consistently from page to page, nor does the icon in the address bar remain. To say nothing of how completely obnoxious the "would you like to translate?" dialog is as I browse page to page. The UX of this feature in Chrome as it exists today (v69) is really terrible. – Jason Salaz Sep 12 '18 at 06:01
  • If you can use the key "t" to access "translate", you can write an automated script, so that the shortcut key can trigger the right-click menu and press "t". For Windows, I use AutoHotKey and bind above action to Numberpad Add. It can work well with the Numberpad Enter to quickly switch between the original text and the translation. – KnIfER Jan 28 '22 at 22:35

2 Answers2

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Enable Always translate in Chrome, that way you do not have to do anything. If it is already English page it will not change.

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Additionally tell Chrome to Offer to Translate

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One more piece of information, I have set up my Chrome to Auto Translate German, and it works, when it is completed it shows this tiny icon on the right side

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Ruskes
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  • No, I'm not using Google Translate in this scenario. I'm relying on the built in translation features of the browser when on any normal website with content other than the defined locale. For example, myself (English-native) browsing pages on https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%83%9A%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B8 It translates text in-place rather than having to copy, switch tabs, click the source text field, paste, etc. – Jason Salaz Sep 12 '18 at 06:11
  • sorry let me fix that – Ruskes Sep 12 '18 at 06:13
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    I don't want to "always translate". Additionally, Chrome doesn't always offer to translate the page and thus doesn't always auto translate pages, the right-click menu option forces it to do so even if the icon/translation offer didn't appear. I want to switch back and forth on-demand. – Jason Salaz Sep 12 '18 at 06:20
  • @JasonSalaz give me an example of a site that does not offer translate so I can check it – Ruskes Sep 12 '18 at 06:45
  • The specific pages I was browsing were access locked, but even the homepage https://p.eagate.573.jp/game/2dx/25/p/top/index.html doesn't offer to translate – Jason Salaz Sep 12 '18 at 06:53
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    This ultimately isn't answering the question I'm asking. I can get the page translated that's not the issue, even when the translation option doesn't appear the option is in the right click menu to force it. What I want to do is bind the act of invoking a translation to a keyboard shortcut. – Jason Salaz Sep 13 '18 at 03:23
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    … I set the shortcut up on one computer, and tested it on another without the shortcut setup. (－‸ლ) wow Jason, just wow. – Jason Salaz Sep 13 '18 at 03:39
  • Upvoting because TIL there is the above "Translate to English" shortcut available via the MacOS Keyboard > Shortcuts functionality. Good to know. I was using BetterTouchTool, which also works. – Tom Hundt Oct 11 '22 at 22:50
  • @JasonSalaz I have found some pages that right clicking and explicitly telling it to translate bring up the option of the correct language to translate from and to and still nothing gets translated. For me at least this is on pages which inexplicably don't automatically get translated. – Michael Jul 25 '23 at 17:38
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I recent setup a friend’s computer to fully automatically and immediately translate all Google search result which original appear in a foreign language (in this case Japanese) into English and it did just that. On my own new computer, however, which is the same model and windows version, it will only translate the foreign language shown in the results into English after I click the result shown in the foreign language. In short, I can’t get Google to automatically translate the search results on my computer unless I click the Google Translate icon and then click ‘Translate this page?’ Yes, I can get the Japanese language site page ‘automatically’ translated after clicking the results shown in the Japanese language, but now I have to go through clicking the Google Translate icon, then ‘translate this page’ I don’t know how I did this previously on my friend’s computer on my friend’s computer, but I would like to do the same on mine, i.e., have everything appear translated in English including the searched page. Does anybody know how to get everything to really automatically appear in English without being ask to click anything first? It happened before so I'm pretty sure it can be done.

Gtranslateauto
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