Nachrichten

• 

  screenshot

Inspiration

I'm currently learning German and I source most of my reading materials from German news channels. When I see a word that I do not know, I'll have to open Google Translate and type in the word to translate it. This gave me the idea for an app that provides the latest news and also instantly translate the word without having to open Google Translate.

What it does

This app retrieves the latest news from news sources and user can click on each article to read it. The app will then scrape that webpage and retrieve the contents. When the user clicks on a word, it instantly translate it.

How we built it

First, I looked at how RSS works and how to parse it. With the URL to the article, I then built a simple web scraper (cheerio.js) to retrieve the contents for me. Finally, I set up my Google Translate API and whenever a user clicks a word on the article, it queries the Translate API and show the results.

Challenges we ran into

How to translate the words. Initially I thought of making a tooltip for each words but that would mean running hundreds of queries through Google Translate API at the same time, which would be costly. I eventually settled for a simpler solution.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

That this first prototype is working as expected.

What we learned

RSS and web scraping

What's next for Nachrichten

Improve the layout and add different news sources.

Built With

• google-translate
• node.js
• react