Telegram Auto-Translate

A Telegram userbot that automatically translates your outgoing messages using conversation context.

Before	After

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How It Works

Your message → Detect languages → Translate with Claude → Clean output → Edit in place

1. Watch - Monitors your outgoing messages
2. Analyze - Gathers recent chat context (default: 10 messages)
3. Detect - Uses GPT-5 to identify the target language based on who you're replying to
4. Skip if unnecessary - Won't translate if your message is already in the target language
5. Translate - Claude translates with full conversation context, matching the chat's tone and style
6. Clean - Strips any LLM artifacts (preambles, quotes) from the output
7. Edit - Replaces your original message with the translation

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Installation

Via PyPI (Recommended)

pip install telegram-auto-translate

From Source

git clone https://github.com/aimoda/telegram-auto-translate
cd telegram-auto-translate
pip install -e .

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Quick Start

# Set required environment variables
# Get TG_API_ID and TG_API_HASH from https://my.telegram.org/apps
export TG_API_ID="your_api_id"
export TG_API_HASH="your_api_hash"
export BEDROCK_AWS_PROFILE="your_aws_profile"
export OPENAI_API_KEY="your_azure_openai_key"

# Run
telegram-auto-translate

On first run, Telethon will prompt for your phone number and login code.

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Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+
• Telegram API credentials - Get API_ID and API_HASH from my.telegram.org
• AWS account with Bedrock access and appropriate IAM permissions
• Azure OpenAI resource (or standard OpenAI API key)

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Configuration

Telegram

Variable	Description
TG_API_ID	Your Telegram API ID (required)
TG_API_HASH	Your Telegram API hash (required)
TG_SESSION_NAME	Session file name (default: translator_session)

AWS Bedrock (Claude)

1. Create an IAM user with programmatic access, then attach an IAM policy with Bedrock invoke permissions:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "AllowBedrockModelInvocationInAUSCANNZUKUS",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "bedrock:InvokeModel",
                "bedrock:InvokeModelWithResponseStream"
            ],
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "aws:RequestedRegion": [
                        "us-east-1",
                        "us-east-2",
                        "us-west-1",
                        "us-west-2",
                        "ca-central-1",
                        "ca-west-1",
                        "eu-west-2",
                        "ap-southeast-2",
                        "ap-southeast-4",
                        "unspecified"
                    ]
                }
            },
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:bedrock:*::foundation-model/*",
                "arn:aws:bedrock:*:*:provisioned-model/*",
                "arn:aws:bedrock:*:*:imported-model/*",
                "arn:aws:bedrock:*:*:inference-profile/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

2. Add credentials to ~/.aws/credentials:

[telegram-translator-bedrock]
aws_access_key_id = YOUR_ACCESS_KEY
aws_secret_access_key = YOUR_SECRET_KEY

3. Set the profile:

export BEDROCK_AWS_PROFILE="telegram-translator-bedrock"
export BEDROCK_AWS_REGION="us-east-1"  # optional, us-east-1 is default

Azure OpenAI (Recommended)

Option A: Azure AD Authentication

export OPENAI_USE_TOKEN_PROVIDER=1
export OPENAI_BASE_URL="https://your-resource.openai.azure.com/openai/v1/"
# Authenticate via: az login

Option B: API Key

export OPENAI_API_KEY="your_azure_openai_key"
export OPENAI_BASE_URL="https://your-resource.openai.azure.com/openai/v1/"

Using Standard OpenAI Instead

export OPENAI_API_KEY="your_openai_key"
export OPENAI_BASE_URL="https://api.openai.com/v1"

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Usage

telegram-auto-translate [options]

Command-Line Flags

Flag	Description	Default
--dry-run	Log translations without editing messages	Off
--debug	Verbose logging of API calls	Off
--context-messages N	Number of previous messages for context	10
--bedrock-profile NAME	AWS profile for Bedrock	$BEDROCK_AWS_PROFILE
--bedrock-region REGION	AWS region for Bedrock	us-east-1
--use-token-provider	Use Azure AD instead of API key	Off
--anthropic-model MODEL	Claude model ID	global.anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929-v1:0
--openai-model MODEL	GPT model for detection/cleaning	gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07

Environment Variables Reference

Variable	Required	Description
TG_API_ID	Yes	Telegram API ID
TG_API_HASH	Yes	Telegram API hash
BEDROCK_AWS_PROFILE	Yes	AWS credentials profile
OPENAI_API_KEY	Yes*	Azure/OpenAI API key
OPENAI_BASE_URL	No	API endpoint URL
OPENAI_USE_TOKEN_PROVIDER	No	Use Azure AD auth (1/true)
BEDROCK_AWS_REGION	No	AWS region (default: us-east-1)
TG_SESSION_NAME	No	Session file name
ANTHROPIC_MODEL	No	Claude model override
OPENAI_MODEL	No	GPT model override
CONTEXT_MESSAGES	No	Context message count

*Not required if OPENAI_USE_TOKEN_PROVIDER=1

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Examples

Test without editing messages:

telegram-auto-translate --dry-run --debug

Use more context for better translations:

telegram-auto-translate --context-messages 20

Use standard OpenAI API:

OPENAI_BASE_URL="https://api.openai.com/v1" telegram-auto-translate

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Troubleshooting

"TG_API_ID and TG_API_HASH are required"

Set both environment variables or pass --api-id and --api-hash flags.

"OPENAI_API_KEY is required"

Either set OPENAI_API_KEY or use --use-token-provider for Azure AD auth.

"BEDROCK_AWS_PROFILE is required"

Set BEDROCK_AWS_PROFILE to your AWS credentials profile name.

Translation not happening

• Check that there are previous messages in the chat (the bot needs context)
• Your message might already be in the detected target language
• Use --debug to see detection results

"AccessDeniedException" from Bedrock

Verify your IAM policy includes bedrock:InvokeModel permission and the model is enabled in your region.

First run hangs

Telethon is waiting for your phone number. Enter it in the terminal.

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Development Setup

For local development and contributions:

Create and activate virtual environment

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate

Install the package

# Install in editable mode for development
pip install -e .

Run the application

# Option 1: Use the installed command
telegram-auto-translate

# Option 2: Run as module (without installing)
PYTHONPATH=src python -m telegram_auto_translate

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Why Bedrock and Azure?

This bot uses Claude via AWS Bedrock for translation and GPT-5 via Azure OpenAI for language detection and output cleaning.

Task	Model	Why
Translation	Claude (Bedrock)	Extended thinking for nuanced, context-aware translations
Language Detection	GPT-5	Excellent structured output performance
Output Cleaning	GPT-5	Reliable artifact removal

We prefer these services for their data handling policies:

• AWS Bedrock - Inputs and outputs are not logged by default
• Azure OpenAI - Your data is not used to train models

You can use standard OpenAI instead of Azure by setting OPENAI_BASE_URL=https://api.openai.com/v1.