Integrating Mastodon and Libretranslate

July 5, 2023

Why?

We want to offer translations inside Mastodon using libretranslate as our backend.

What do I need to install?

Your need a working mastodon, we recommend this howto

https://blog.gcn.sh/howtos/installing-mastodon-4-1-2-using-docker-on-ubuntu

Your need a working libretranslate, we recommend this howto

https://blog.gcn.sh/howtos/installing-libretranslate-using-docker-and-ubuntu

How to integrate them?

You need to add these two variables on the application.env file if you are following our mastodon howto.

LIBRE_TRANSLATE_ENDPOINT=https://libretranslate.bolha.tools
LIBRE_TRANSLATE_API_KEY=ecae7db0-bolha-us-is-cool-c84c14d2117a

Then restart it

cd /opt/mastodon/docker
docker-compose restart

After that you can check the logs

docker-compose logs -f|grep TranslationsController

Expected output with status code 200

website            | [01fa1ece-5ab3-411d-bd6b-4b5131096735] method=POST path=/api/v1/statuses/110658724777490930/translate format=html controller=Api::V1::Statuses::TranslationsController action=create status=200 duration=2988.25 view=0.77 db=2.32

Sometimes you can get a status code 503, yes, it will happen, it's not perfect but works well most of the time.

website            | [752a45c9-a94a-408a-8262-7b71cc1528e9] method=POST path=/api/v1/statuses/110658727361133356/translate format=html controller=Api::V1::Statuses::TranslationsController action=create status=503 duration=10117.47 view=0.49 db=2.19

Enjoy it!