Translate Text

Azure AI Translator is a service that enables you to translate text between languages.

For example, suppose a travel agency wants to examine hotel reviews that have been submitted to the company’s web site, standardizing on English as the language that is used for analysis. By using Azure AI Translator, they can determine the language each review is written in, and if it is not already English, translate it from whatever source language it was written in into English.

Clone the repo into your Azure Cloud Shell

  1. In the Azure portal, select the [>_] (Cloud Shell) button at the top of the page to the right of the search box. A Cloud Shell pane will open at the bottom of the portal.

    Screenshot of starting Cloud Shell by clicking on the icon to the right of the top search box.

  2. The first time you open the Cloud Shell, you may be prompted to choose the type of shell you want to use (Bash or PowerShell). Select PowerShell. If you don’t see this option, skip the step.

  3. If you’re prompted to create storage for your Cloud Shell, ensure your subscription is specified and select Create storage. Then wait a minute or so for the storage to be created.

  4. Once the terminal starts, run the following commands to download a copy of the repo into your Cloud Shell:

     rm -r azure-ai-eng -f
 git clone https://github.com/MicrosoftLearning/AI-102-AIEngineer azure-ai-eng

  5. The files have been downloaded into a folder called azure-ai-eng. Let’s use the Cloud Shell Code editor to open the appropriate folder by running:

         code azure-ai-eng/06-translate-text

Provision an Azure AI Translator resource

If you don’t already have one in your subscription, you’ll need to provision an Azure AI Translator resource.

  1. Open the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com, and sign in using the Microsoft account associated with your Azure subscription.
  2. In the search field at the top, search for Azure AI services and press Enter, then select Create under Translator in the results.
  3. Create a resource with the following settings:
    • Subscription: Your Azure subscription
    • Resource group: Choose or create a resource group (if you are using a restricted subscription, you may not have permission to create a new resource group - use the one provided)
    • Region: East US
    • Name: Enter a unique name
    • Pricing tier: Standard S1
  4. Select Create + review, then select Create.
  5. Wait for deployment to complete, and then view the deployment details.
  6. When the resource has been deployed, go to it and view its Keys and Endpoint page. You will need one of the keys and the location in which the service is provisioned from this page in the next procedure.

Prepare to use Azure AI Translator

In this exercise, you’ll complete a partially implemented client application that uses the Azure AI Translator REST API to translate hotel reviews.

[!NOTE] You can choose to use the API from either C# or Python. In the steps below, perform the actions appropriate for your preferred language.

  1. In your Cloud Shell editor, expand the 06-translate-text folder, and then the C-Sharp or Python folder depending on your language preference.
  2. View the contents of the text-translation folder, and note that it contains a file for configuration settings:
    • C#: appsettings.json
    • Python: .env

    Open the configuration file and update the configuration values it contains to include an authentication key for your Azure AI Translator resource, and the location where it is deployed (not the endpoint) - you should copy both of these from the Keys and Endpoint page for your Azure AI Translator resource. Save your changes ny pressing CTRL + S.

  3. Note that the text-translation folder contains a code file for the client application:

    • C#: Program.cs
    • Python: text-translation.py

    Open the code file and examine the code it contains.

  4. In the Main function, note that code to load the Azure AI Translator key and region from the configuration file has already been provided. The endpoint for the service is also specified in your code.

  5. In your terminal enter the following commands to point the terminal to the appropriate folder and do a test run:

    C#

     cd AI-Engineer/06-translate-text/C-Sharp/text-translation

    C#

     dotnet run

    Python

     cd AI-Engineer/06-translate-text/Python/text-translation

    Python

     pip install python-dotenv

    Python

     python text-translation.py
  6. Observe the output as the code should run without error, displaying the contents of each review text file in the reviews folder. The application currently doesn’t make use of Azure AI Translator. We’ll fix that in the next procedure.

Detect language

Azure AI Translator can automatically detect the source language of text to be translated, but it also enables you to explicitly detect the language in which text is written.

  1. In your code file, find the GetLanguage function, which currently returns “en” for all text values.

  2. In the GetLanguage function, under the comment Use the Azure AI Translator detect function, add the following code to use the Azure AI Translator’s REST API to detect the language of the specified text, being careful not to replace the code at the end of the function that returns the language:

    C#

     // Use the Azure AI Translator detect function
 object[] body = new object[] { new { Text = text } };
 var requestBody = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(body);
 using (var client = new HttpClient())
 {
     using (var request = new HttpRequestMessage())
     {
         // Build the request
         string path = "/detect?api-version=3.0";
         request.Method = HttpMethod.Post;
         request.RequestUri = new Uri(translatorEndpoint + path);
         request.Content = new StringContent(requestBody, Encoding.UTF8, "application/json");
         request.Headers.Add("Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key", cogSvcKey);
         request.Headers.Add("Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Region", cogSvcRegion);
    
         // Send the request and get response
         HttpResponseMessage response = await client.SendAsync(request).ConfigureAwait(false);
         // Read response as a string
         string responseContent = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
    
         // Parse JSON array and get language
         JArray jsonResponse = JArray.Parse(responseContent);
         language = (string)jsonResponse[0]["language"]; 
     }
 }

    Python

     # Use the Azure AI Translator detect function
 path = '/detect'
 url = translator_endpoint + path
    
 # Build the request
 params = {
     'api-version': '3.0'
 }
    
 headers = {
 'Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key': cog_key,
 'Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Region': cog_region,
 'Content-type': 'application/json'
 }
    
 body = [{
     'text': text
 }]
    
 # Send the request and get response
 request = requests.post(url, params=params, headers=headers, json=body)
 response = request.json()
    
 # Parse JSON array and get language
 language = response[0]["language"]

  3. Save your changes by pressing CTRL+S and and enter the following command in the terminal to run the program:

    C#

     dotnet run

    Python

     python text-translation.py
  4. Observe the output, noting that this time the language for each review is identified.

Translate text

Now that your application can determine the language in which reviews are written, you can use Azure AI Translator to translate any non-English reviews into English.

  1. In your code file, find the Translate function, which currently returns and empty string for all text values.
  2. In the Translate function, under the comment Use the Azure AI Translator translate function, add the following code to use the Azure AI Translator’s REST API to translate the specified text from its source language into English, being careful not to replace the code at the end of the function that returns the translation:

C#

// Use the Azure AI Translator translate function
object[] body = new object[] { new { Text = text } };
var requestBody = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(body);
using (var client = new HttpClient())
{
    using (var request = new HttpRequestMessage())
    {
        // Build the request
        string path = "/translate?api-version=3.0&from=" + sourceLanguage + "&to=en" ;
        request.Method = HttpMethod.Post;
        request.RequestUri = new Uri(translatorEndpoint + path);
        request.Content = new StringContent(requestBody, Encoding.UTF8, "application/json");
        request.Headers.Add("Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key", cogSvcKey);
        request.Headers.Add("Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Region", cogSvcRegion);

        // Send the request and get response
        HttpResponseMessage response = await client.SendAsync(request).ConfigureAwait(false);
        // Read response as a string
        string responseContent = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();

        // Parse JSON array and get translation
        JArray jsonResponse = JArray.Parse(responseContent);
        translation = (string)jsonResponse[0]["translations"][0]["text"];  
    }
}

Python

# Use the Azure AI Translator translate function
path = '/translate'
url = translator_endpoint + path

# Build the request
params = {
    'api-version': '3.0',
    'from': source_language,
    'to': ['en']
}

headers = {
    'Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key': cog_key,
    'Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Region': cog_region,
    'Content-type': 'application/json'
}

body = [{
    'text': text
}]

# Send the request and get response
request = requests.post(url, params=params, headers=headers, json=body)
response = request.json()

# Parse JSON array and get translation
translation = response[0]["translations"][0]["text"]

  1. Save your changes and enter the following command to run the program:

    C#

     dotnet run

    Python

     python text-translation.py

  2. Observe the output, noting that non-English reviews are translated into English.

More information

For more information about using Azure AI Translator, see the Azure AI Translator documentation.