Naver Papago Translate

Translate text between Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, and 10+ other languages using Naver Papago NMT. Ideal for Korean-centric workflows, i18n tasks, and automation pipelines.

Translate text through Naver's Papago NMT API from the CLI or Python. Supports 13+ language pairs (ko/en/ja/zh-CN/zh-TW/vi/id/th/de/ru/es/it/fr) with optional auto-detect.

When to use

• You need high-quality Korean↔X translation (Papago is tuned for Korean).
• You want a headless, dependency-light translator for agent pipelines.
• You prefer official Naver Developer credentials over scraping.

Prerequisites

1. Get credentials from Naver Developers → create a Papago NMT app.
2. Export environment variables:

bash

export NAVER_CLIENT_ID="your-client-id"
export NAVER_CLIENT_SECRET="your-client-secret"

3. Install:

bash

pip install naver-papago-translate
# or from source
pip install git+https://github.com/ChloePark85/naver-papago-translate

CLI

bash

papago-translate --source ko --target en "안녕하세요, 만나서 반가워요!"
# → Hello, nice to meet you!

# Auto-detect source
papago-translate --detect --target ko "See you tomorrow!"

# Read from file, JSON output
papago-translate -s ko -t en -f notes.txt --json

Options: -s/--source, -t/--target (required), -f/--file, --detect, --json, --timeout, -v/--verbose.

Python API

python

from papago_translate import translate_text, detect_language

out = translate_text("ko", "en", "테스트 중입니다.")
lang = detect_language("Bonjour")

Supported languages

ko, en, ja, zh-CN, zh-TW, vi, id, th, de, ru, es, it, fr — see Naver docs for the current list.

Security

• Credentials read only from env or flags; never logged unless --verbose.
• HTTPS to openapi.naver.com.

References

• Papago NMT: https://openapi.naver.com/v1/papago/n2mt
• Detect language: https://openapi.naver.com/v1/papago/detectLangs
• Source: https://github.com/ChloePark85/naver-papago-translate