Google TTS API for Arabic, Chinese and Greek

Question

I am trying to download an mp3 file from google TTS API, here is the code

try {   

        String path ="http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en&q=hello";
        //this is the name of the local file you will create
        String targetFileName = "test.mp3";
            boolean eof = false;
        URL u = new URL(path);
        HttpURLConnection c = (HttpURLConnection) u.openConnection();
        c.addRequestProperty("User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0");
        c.setRequestMethod("GET");
        c.setDoOutput(true);
        c.connect();
        FileOutputStream f = new FileOutputStream(new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory()
                + "/download/"+targetFileName));
            InputStream in = c.getInputStream();
            byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
            int len1 = 0;
            while ( (len1 = in.read(buffer)) > 0 ) {
            f.write(buffer,0, len1);
                     }
        f.close();
        } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (ProtocolException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();


    }

This works fine, but when I try to make the request for languages like chinese or greek which use special characters

String path ="http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=zh-TW&q=你好";

The mp3 file I get back has no sound but from the size of the file I can tell it has data in it. When I try the same with Arabic

String path ="http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=ar&q=%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%84%D9%87";

I get back an empty mp3 file with 0 bytes.

I have tried using different user agents and nothing seems to work.

Please help.

Thank You

Answer 1

Use the path as a URI rather than a string then change it to an ascii string.

URI uri = new URI("http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=zh-TW&q=你好");

URL u = new URL(uri.toASCIIString());

Answer 2

I have your same problem. But I have solve it yesterday. I wanna the API say Chinese and save to mp3 file .

The url now is: path ="http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=zh-TW&q=你好" you do as follow: path ="http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?ie=UTF-8&tl=zh-TW&q=".urlencode("你好");

Add a param ie=utf-8 AND encode the Chinese words. You'll got what you want .

Answer 3

and if the app crashes try this

txtToTranslate = txtToTranslate.replace(" ", "%20");

it replaces the spaces between the words.