Idan- There already is an auto translate module: http://drupal.org/project/i18n_auto This module has the same issue that you mention, which is caused by Google's compression of the special characters. Aaron Winborn and I just submitted 4 tasks to the GHOP queue (well, they're all in one issue, but will be split into 4 tasks) to bring this module out of Dev and into a full version (part of the task is to fix this exact issue): http://drupal.org/node/208539 Care to work with us to fix this module, rather than create a new one? If this is taken on by one of the students it very well may be fixed in the near future... -- Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg (917) 407-9086 alex@zivtech.com Future Majority - http://futuremajority.com Young Philly Politics - http://youngphillypolitics.com ZivTech - http://zivtech.com Message: 6

Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 19:30:52 +0200 From: "Idan Arbel" <idan@arbel-designs.com> Subject: [development] Google translation module To: < development@drupal.org> Message-ID: <20080112173054.D6AE530021@sa5.bezeqint.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hello,

I'm working on a module to auto translate nodes on my websites. I'm using google translate to do this.

I've encountered a problem that I was hoping someone would have an idea how to solve..when I translate a text that has "special characters", mainly those that aren't English, and I try to display them, I get characters that are black diamonds. When trying to display those using drupal with drupal set message, something strange happens, it seems like drupal just ignores the entire function. I'm trying to print it out of a nodeapi hook, and the when I do all the other drupal_set_messages aren't displayed, even those that come before.

Anyway, I think I've isolated the problem to the encoding of the characters, but I don't know how to solve it. I see the characters with the black diamonds when I print_r($translation), in this case I only see them. And when ever I try to drupal_set_message them I don't see anything.

If I translate a text that doesn't have one of those characters, all is well.

This is what I'm using to translate the texts:

function google_translate($text, $from = 'en', $to = 'es') {

$data = "h1=en&ie=UTF8&text=$text";

$result = drupal_http_request(I18N_AUTO_GOOGLE_TRANSLATE_TRANSLATOR_URL .

'?langpair='. $from .'|'. $to, array(), 'POST', $data);

$texttosearch = "id=result_box";

$start = strpos($result->data, $texttosearch);

$end = strpos($result->data, "</div>", $start+24);

$start = $start + 24;

$translated = substr($result->data, $start, $end-$start);

return $translated;

}

Thanks

Idan