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Argos Translate

A Python library and command-line tool for offline neural machine translation using downloadable language packages

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Offline Translation
Performs neural machine translation entirely on-device once a language package is installed, allowing translation without an internet connection and keeping text off remote servers.
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Automatic Language Pivoting
Chains together intermediate installed language pairs (e.g. es→en→fr) when a direct pair isn’t installed, enabling translation between many more language combinations without downloading every pair individually with a slight likely loss in translation quality.
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Python Library API
Exposes package management and translation through the argostranslate Python module, allowing developers to embed offline translation directly inside their own applications.
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Command-Line Interface
Provides the argos-translate and argospm command-line tools for translating text and managing language packages, enabling scripted or batch translation workflows without a GUI.
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GPU Acceleration
Offloads inference to a CUDA-capable GPU via the ARGOS_DEVICE_TYPE environment variable and CTranslate2’s device backend, speeding up translation throughput on supported hardware.
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Downloadable Language Packages
Distributes each language pair as a separate .argosmodel package, allowing users to install only the languages they need instead of a single large bundled model set.
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HTML and File Translation Extensions
Integrates with companion libraries such as translate-html and argos-translate-files, enabling structured documents and web pages to be translated in place rather than as plain text only.
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Graphical User Interface
Offers a separate PyQt-based desktop GUI for installing packages and translating text, giving non-technical users a point-and-click alternative to the library or CLI.
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Bounded Input Length Per Pass
The underlying seq2seq models process roughly 150 tokens at a time, requiring text to be split into sentences before translation and limiting single-pass accuracy on long, unsegmented input.
...2 more features/limitations. Contact us to get a complete list of features and system requirements.

Platform

Desktop
Language
Python

Social

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System Requirements

#Minimum
1
  • Python 3.5 or higher
  • CTranslate2 (must be built from source; no official Windows binaries)
#Minimum
1
Python 3.5 or higher
#Minimum
1
Python 3.5 or higher

Ratings

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Developer

Written in

Python, Shell

Initial Release

2020-10-15

Repository

License

Categories

Alternatives

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Notes

  • A hosted/self-hosted web app and API built on top of Argos Translate is available as LibreTranslate.
  • Windows users should expect to build the CTranslate2 dependency from source, since only Linux and macOS binaries are officially distributed.