Web Translator API

You had me at "Browser compatibility".

Chrome embeds a small LLM (never stops being a funny thing) in the browser allowing them to do local translations.

I assume every browser will do the same as on-device models start becoming more useful.

What's the easiest way to get this functionality outside of the browser, e.g. as a CLI tool?

Last time I looked I wasn't able to find any easy to run models that supported more than a handful of languages.

That depends on what counts as “a handful of languages” for you.

You can use llm for this fairly easily:

    uv tool install llm

    # Set up your model however you like. For instance:
    llm install llm-ollama
    ollama pull mistral-small3.2

    llm --model mistral-small3.2 --system "Translate to English, no other output" --save english
    alias english="llm --template english"

    english "Bonjour"
    english "Hola"
    english "Γειά σου"
    english "你好"
    cat some_file.txt | english

https://llm.datasette.io

Tip: You might want to use `uv tool install llm --with llm-ollama`.

ref: https://github.com/simonw/llm/issues/575