Minion Translator

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  The image on our Alexa skill on the amazon skill store.

Inspiration

We were inspired (and in no way affiliated) with the Despicable Minion character. As teenagers (and little kids at heart) the randomness, creativity, and overall fun that the minion character embodies and displays through his/her language is engaging and would be more engaging for little kids. Also, we thought that having a voice assistant device mess up the pronunciation of the words, which would make sense due to there being no minion related voice assistant, would also be a source of entertainment for users of the skill.

What it does

The Minion Translator skill takes as input any word or phrase and translates it into the minion language. In order to get started with the Minion Translator, simply ask Minion Translator "how to use the minion translator" or simply just ask minion translator for "help" and you will be prompted with detailed instructions on how to use the Minion translator.

How we built it

We used the Alexa skill kit SDK for creating the skill, We also used Amazon lambda for writing and editing the code and the backend, and we used Fun Translations API to translate English into the minion language.

Challenges we ran into

A few challenges we ran into related to this being my first time creating an alexa skill and not knowing how to use the Alexa SDK. Also, we had never used an API before so it was our first time using JSON and the urllib and urllib2 libraries. The challenges we ran into were mostly related to this being my first time with an API and an Alexa skill, such as the format of how the Alexa SDK uses JSON for input and output of the lambda function. It was also our first time creating a lambda function, so there were a few road bumps related to that. Related to the API, in the beginning, we had little trouble using an external library, but it wouldn't run in the lambda function due to the Amazon Linux machines only having python's internal libraries, which forced me to use urllib and urllib2 which was complicated due to the multiple name changes the libraries functions had from python 2.7 to 3.6.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of my lambda function, use of API's, and use of the Alexa SDK.

What we learned

We learned how to use API's, how to create and Alexa skill from start to end with a lambda function, as well as some nifty words and phrases in the minion language (such as bee translates to buzz buzz). We also learned a lot about copyright and submission to the alexa skill store.

What's next for Minion Translator

We are planning on making Minion Translator an app on the google or apple app store or maybe making more fun Alexa skills.

Built With

• alexa-skill-sdk
• amazon-lambda
• fun-translation-api
• python2.7
• urllib
• urllib2