🚀 New Update: Multi-Language Translation Now Available on The Magazine
🚀 New Update: Multi-Language Translation Now Available on The Magazine
Multi-Language Translation Now Available on The Magazine
If you've been reading articles on themagazine.php, you may have noticed a new little feature: a Translate dropdown next to each post that lets you read the content in dozens of languages via Google Translate.
Simple idea, surprisingly tricky to implement across all three blockchain blogging platforms — Steem, Hive, and Blurt.
How It Works
Every article now has a Translate → dropdown next to the usual Full Article → link. Click it and you'll see a list of available languages. Pick one, and Google Translate opens the article in your chosen language in a new tab.
The language list is pulled dynamically from a lang table in the database, so adding a new language is just a matter of inserting a new row — no code changes needed.
The Steemit Problem
On Hive and Blurt, everything worked smoothly: Google Translate fetches the original page and serves a translated version. Done.
Steemit, however, blocks Google Translate's crawlers. If you try to translate a steemit.com URL directly, you get an error page instead of the translated content. This is likely due to restrictive robots.txt rules or anti-bot measures on Steemit's end.
The Workaround: read.php
To bypass this limitation, I built a lightweight proxy page called read.php. Here's what it does:
- Receives the post URL as a parameter
- Extracts the
@author/permlinkfrom it - Calls the Steem RPC API (
condenser_api.get_content) server-side to fetch the post body - Renders the Markdown into clean HTML
- Returns a standalone page with a simple white background and black text
Google Translate can then fetch and translate this page without any issues, since it lives on our own domain and has no access restrictions.
A small warning banner at the top of the translated page informs readers that the content is being served via this proxy because Steemit blocks direct translation.
Try It Yourself
Want to see this very post translated via timeapp.foundation? Here are the links (keep only the one relevant to the platform you're reading this on):
The dropdown offers many more languages — Spanish is just an example. Give it a try on any article and let me know if your language is missing!
Feedback welcome! If you spot a rendering issue or a missing language, drop a comment below.
📍 Where to Try It
| Platform | Link |
|---|---|
| TheMagazine (Steem) | Open |
| TheMagazine (Hive) | Open |
| TheMagazine (Blurt) | Open |
👏 Thanks
Special thanks to all people testing, reporting issues, and helping improve these tools.