Google Translate via VBA setting for accept-encoding - excel

Question

I'm trying to use the google translate API via VBA (works in python so far), and I found that the only difference between the python request and the VBA one is on the header "accept-encoding", the python one uses the "application/gzip" and works, but the VBA one is automatically changed to "gzip,deflate" even if I change it through code. Here is the code:
Function Test_GoogleTranslate()
Dim strTranslate As String
Dim objRequest As Object
Dim strUrl As String
Dim blnAsync As Boolean
Dim strResponse As String
Dim strWeather As String
Dim payload As String
Set objRequest = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP")
payload = "target=es&q=something&source=en"
strTranslate = "https://google-translate1.p.rapidapi.com/language/translate/v2"
strTranslate = strTranslate & "?" & payload
With objRequest
.Open "POST", strTranslate, True
.setRequestHeader "host", "google-translate1.p.rapidapi.com"
.setRequestHeader "x-forwarded-port", "443"
.setRequestHeader "x-forwarded-proto", "https"
.setRequestHeader "connection", "keep-alive"
.setRequestHeader "content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
.setRequestHeader "accept-encoding", "application/gzip"
.setRequestHeader "x-rapidapi-host", "google-translate1.p.rapidapi.com"
.setRequestHeader "x-rapidapi-key", "856e8ba78dmsh443766612c5a923p14f661jsn72323e803261"
.Send
While objRequest.readyState <> 4
DoEvents
Wend
strResponse = .ResponseText
End With
MsgBox (strResponse)
End Function
When I changed the accept-encoding to "gzip, deflate" in python it crashed, so I figured that might be the problem.
Any help is greatly appreciated

Answer 1

I had some success with Google Translate and Excel VBA using the MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP object. I note you are using MSXML2.XMLHTTP. The solution appears to work well only setting a User-Agent request header so I did not delve into accept-encoding etc.
The differences between MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP and MSXML2.XMLHTTP are touched upon in this question which might be useful for you.
Working code using MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP:
Option Explicit
Sub Test()
Debug.Print Translate("Hello", "en", "fr", True) ' french
Debug.Print Translate("Hello", "en", "de", True) ' german
Debug.Print Translate("Hello", "en", "pt", True) ' portuguese
Debug.Print Translate("Hello", "en", "ru", False) ' russian - use romanised alphabet
Debug.Print Translate("Hello", "en", "ru", True) ' russian - use cyrillic
' ThisWorkbook.Sheets(1).Range("A1").Value = Translate("Hello", "en", "ru", True)
Debug.Print Translate("Hello", "en", "zh-CN", False) ' chinese simplified - use romanised alphabet
Debug.Print Translate("Hello", "en", "zh-CN", True) ' chinese simplified - use chinese script
' ThisWorkbook.Sheets(1).Range("B1").Value = Translate("Hello", "en", "zh-CN", True)
End Sub
Public Function Translate(strInput As String, strFromLanguageCode As String, strToLanguageCode As String, blnTargetAlphabet As Boolean) As String
Dim strURL As String
Dim objHTTP As Object
Dim objHTML As Object
Dim objDivs As Object, objDiv
Dim strTranslatedT0 As String
Dim strTranslatedO1 As String
' send query to web page
strURL = "https://translate.google.com/m?hl=" & strFromLanguageCode & _
"&sl=" & strFromLanguageCode & _
"&tl=" & strToLanguageCode & _
"&ie=UTF-8&prev=_m&q=" & strInput
Set objHTTP = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
objHTTP.Open "GET", strURL, False
objHTTP.setRequestHeader "User-Agent", "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)"
objHTTP.send ""
' create a html document
Set objHTML = CreateObject("htmlfile")
With objHTML
.Open
.Write objHTTP.responseText
.Close
End With
' o1 has Anglicised translation, t0 as tranlsation in target language
Set objDivs = objHTML.getElementsByTagName("div")
For Each objDiv In objDivs
If objDiv.className = "o1" Then
strTranslatedO1 = objDiv.innerText
End If
If objDiv.className = "t0" Then
strTranslatedT0 = objDiv.innerText
End If
Next objDiv
' choose which to return
If blnTargetAlphabet Then
Translate = strTranslatedT0
Else
Translate = strTranslatedO1
End If
CleanUp:
Set objHTML = Nothing
Set objHTTP = Nothing
End Function
Result:
Bonjour
Hallo
Olá
Privet
??????
Ni hao
??
The VBA immediate window doesn't print Cyrillic or Chinese characters but you can see this feature working by outputing to a cell:
December 2020 update
Looks like this method will no longer work going back maybe to mid November.
Looking at the response
the div class names have changed to something more obscure
there's some esoteric c-wiz elements doing something wonderful...
also, I suspect that some client side script is calling for the actual translation after the document is retrieved
Options: Selenium, Microsoft Translate, free and paid tiers for Google translation APIs ;)