Naver Papago translation system-wide with macOS Shortcuts

There is a nice Translation service already built into the latest versions of macOS, with which you can highlight text anywhere system-wide and with a simple right-click bring up a pop-up translation of the text. But this is limited to using the Apple translator, which sometimes isn't the best choice. If you are in Korea, you may prefer using Naver's own translator Papago. 

Luckily, you can get immediate pop-up translations from Papago system-wide on your Mac by using a very simple Shortcut. 

Note that in a previous post I mentioned how to do with this a macOS Automator set up. 

Use Naver Papago translation system-wide on macOS

This new method is essentially going to reproduce the exact same thing, using macOS Shortcuts. I decided to make this since it seems like this is the support direction Apple is going in, so better to "upgrade" this. 

Create the Papago shortcut

Just go to the Shortcuts app and create a new shortcut. Fill in the steps so that it looks like the following:

macOS Shortcut for Papago translation

Here are the steps in more legible form:

1. Receive [Text] input from [Quick Actions]
2. URL [Encode] [Shortcut Input]
3. https://papago.naver.com/?sl=ko&tk=en&st=[URL Encoded Text]
4. Show webpage at [URL]

I know this is annoying that I didn't just share an iCloud link, but those can end up deadlinked too often. Better to have the raw info here.

Be careful in step 3 there to ensure that there is absolutely no space between the final equals sign in the Papago URL and the Apple Shortcuts variable for "URL Encoded Text". Although it may seem like you want to hit the "+" sign to add that variable to the end of the URL, this will return an error. Just put the input cursor right there at the end of the equals sign as if you're editing the URL, and start typing UR... and the variable will pop-up in a suggestion. Use that. 

Of course you can edit the Papago URL to use a language other than English by changing the "en". 

Ensure that in the sidebar options, you check the box for "Use as Quick Action > Services menu" so that you can easily run the shortcut while having text highlighted. This will let you simply highlight any text, any where, and right-click, choose "Services" > "Papago shortcut".

When you do, you'll get a simple Papago pop-up window on top of whatever you're doing, like this:

Papago translation shortcut in action

Apply a keyboard shortcut

This works fine but your workflow can be much faster by assigning a keyboard shortcut to this. For example, I use ^P

I find this a very convenient way to get quick word or phrase translations, especially when I want to compare between the Apple translation and Papago. 

This method works great for Google Translate too. In that case just replace the Papago URL with the Google version:

https://translate.google.com/?sl=ko&tl=en&text=

You can also use the basic bookmarklet URLs to turn this Shortcut into a Coupang search, Naver Dictionary search, etc, as I highlighted here:

Bookmarklets for searching Naver, Naver Dictionary, Coupang

Hopefully this will make dealing with Korean language emails, text messages, Kakao messages, etc just a little easier.