A thread started on a private mailing about incorporating many more things in this extension than originally envisioned.
To make the discussion open to everybody, searchable and archived, I'm copying it here

Reply from Gateano:

About google translation: I already did an extension for that: http://projects.ez.no/ezgoogletranslate
The interface is rudimentary at the moment, and the code is in svn only (never released version 0.1)
You are welcome to apply as participant and hack on it all day and all night. Kudos if you get funding for that.

Note that there is also another extension about google translation: google_translate_in_backend.
I once told the author of that extension that we could collaborate together. He sent me his code, and I never found the time to analyze it to see if it was fit for inclusion in mt extension. Shame on me (sorry lukasz)!

About adding GUI interface to eztranslationtools: I am not really sure this is what I envisioned - as the 'tools' name implies, it should be something more of a collection of scripts for the developer / sysadmin.

About using a translation source that is a phrasebook: that could be a good idea. But where to put it?
a) in a separate extension of its own
b) in ezgoogletranslate, as separate data source
c) in eztstools

choice a is not optimal because of extension proliferation, plus we'd not be able to reuse code from the other two extensions
choice b is not optimal because we could need some code from eztstools
choice c is not optimal because of this 'no gui' principle, plus we'd need some code from ezgoogletranslate

Any comments are welcome - in fact
. I am ccing two people that might be interested in this
. I propose we move this thread to a discussion in the extension's own forum (and maybe post a ping in the translators forum, too)

Reply from Lukasz Klejmberg:

Ok, i think that we can make a GUI interface for editors and maybe for frontend user we can add possibility to use translate when he writes someting on forum, posts, comments?

maybe it will be good idea when we can add possibility for developers who wants to translate some nodes, trees at one click/shell command, for example using cli scripts or from backend?

In my extension i used asynchronous method using google api (PHP) but now i don't know wheter it was a good idea?

here is the latest api:
http://code.google.com/intl/pl/ap...ge/translate/v2/getting_started.html

but the grauded api is here:
http://code.google.com/intl/pl/ap...ge/translate/v1/getting_started.html

on what version we could resist solution, how do you think?

Final replies:

[Marko]
>> P.S.2 Just another idea that came up now. Caching of translation results would be a good idea. So that we don't have to call google apis several times for the same terms.


[Lukasz]
> I think your proposal is fine but there is another way using the current version of the object to be translated, thus creating an object in another language?

[Marko]
Well the caching I was referring to is just caching of the translated words/phrases in a cache file and has nothing to do with eZ objects and translations. It's just simple file caching of terms that were already translated that can later be reused in translating many objects without having to call the google apis again for the cached terms.
This could even be a more "permanent" cache than standard eZ cache (think of storage folder), so that it doesn't get cleared when deleting eZ cache.

@Nicolas

One idea is to make the extension pluggable and configurable so that it can use many different translation tools. For example both v1 and v2 of google translate apis and other services for realtime translation. And also support different translation file formats for background translation, so that you can upload the translation file made by your preffered CAT tool.

If you have any suggestions or ideas how to integrate some crowdin's functionality into eztranslationtools, feel free to come forward.