gtranslate/README.md

# gtranslate
Better front-end for Google Translate that is lightweight, doesn't track
you and works without JavaScript.

# Installation
```sh
git clone https://git.sr.ht/~yerinalexey/gtranslate
cd gtranslate

go build
```

Then run the server with

```sh
./gtranslate
```

If you want to use a different port:

```sh
./gtranslate -b :3000 # will run on port 3000
```

Note: if you're running it outside of development environment, you
should pass `--templates-dir` and `--static-dir` arguments pointing to
templates and static directories:

```sh
./gtranslate \
  --templates-dir path/to/gtranslate/templates \
  --static-dir    path/to/gtranslate/static
```

Other settings (available with `./gtranslate --help`):

```
Usage of ./gtranslate:
  -b, --bind string            Address to bind the server to, [addr]:port (default ":5000")
      --proxy string           Proxy URL, with no scheme http is assumed
      --static-dir string      Static files directory (default "./static")
      --templates-dir string   Templates directory (default "./templates")
      --user-agent string      User-Agent header to use
```

# Using Tor
Routing requests through Tor has its benefits:
- Google will have a hard time tracking `gtranslate` servers as they act like normal Tor users
- You probably won't get banned as requests are made from different IPs

Despite that, it has some drawbacks:
- Much slower response time
- Might get capcha or some other junk that will block requests
- If doing the wrong thing, you might get your server compromised (in terms of anonymity)
- This feature is not tested in development

First of, you need to set up Tor daemon on the server. Here's a guide on
ArchWiki: [Tor].

[Tor]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/tor

With default settings, it should start a SOCKS5 proxy on localhost, port
9050.

Also, to minimize fingerprint, you need to use a very common user agent
on Tor network. And, you guessed it, get it straight from Tor Browser.
If you have one, you can just open https://httpbin.org/headers and copy
it from there. If not, the latest available is provided here:
[Tor Browser's User-Agent][tor-browser-user-agent].

[tor-browser-user-agent]: https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/4890/tor-browser-user-agent-strings/21524#21524
 
Full setup:

```sh
./gtranslate \
  --user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0" \
  --proxy "socks5://localhost:9050" \
  ...
```

If you have managed to set it up or experienced issues with this guide,
feel free to shoot an email to my [public inbox].

[public inbox]: https://lists.sr.ht/~yerinalexey/public-inbox