Note for developers about the new translation component in App Inventor 2

We have recently added a translation component based on the Yandex.Translate service.

This service needs an API key to work, and as you can imagine, we have not pushed that into the repo. In fact, we cannot circulate that key, so if you are creating your own distribution of App Inventor or simply running your own server from the MIT repository, you will have to add that key to the source code before you compile the system.

This is an easy thing to do; once you have created a Yandex account, you can request a key. After that, paste that key in the component.

  public YandexTranslate(ComponentContainer container) {
    super(container.$form());

    // Set up the Yandex.Translate Tagline in the 'About' screen
    form.setYandexTranslateTagline();

    // TODO (user) To provide users with this component you will need to obtain
    // a key with the Yandex.Translate service at http://api.yandex.com/translate/
    yandexKey = "";
    activity = container.$context();
  }

The place to paste it is in the yandexKey string available in the constructor, as shown in the code above. The instructions in the TODO are rather explicit.

And that would be all if you think that all your users will not generate enough traffic to go over the limits of a particular key. If that is not the case, I would recommend to modify the component to allow your users to add their own keys when creating apps. This is what we do in some other components such as Twitter or FusionTables.

Also note that this component, when being used, adds some information to the About screen in the app:

This is a design requirement that is mandatory to use the service. If you decide to tamper with that, or you have disabled the About screen, I would recommend to find another solution to keep this requirement or you will be breaching the terms of use for the service.