Edit: Since I wrote this in 2009, Google have withdrawn free access to the translation API. I’ll leave this post up for anyone using the paid version though…

If you’ve ever worked on localizing an application or website, you may be familiar with the .po files used with GNU gettext and compatible tools.

I’ve written a script which can take a .po file and translate any untranslated strings with Google Translate. This may not be a ‘release quality’ translation, but does speed up the job of a real translator, who can simply proof read and correct the machine-translated entries.

See it in action here: http://pepipopum.dixo.net

I’ve released the source under the Affero GPL too, so you can tweak or host it yourself. The version hosted above does have a one second delay between translations, so if you want to go faster you’re encouraged to do exactly that!

Hope someone else finds it useful.