MCP Texttranslation

🚀 MCP Translation Service

The MCP Provider based on the NiuTrans API offers a text translation tool and language catalog resources, making it easy to reference in clients such as Cursor and mcp-cli.

🚀 Quick Start

Install and start the release version using uv

uv tool install mcp-translation-text

🔧 Environment Variables

• NIUTRANS_API_KEY (Required): The API Key provided by the NiuTrans Open Platform, which can be used for free. Please log in to obtain it: https://niutrans.com/cloud/account_info/info

💰 Billing Instructions

This service uses the text translation API of NiuTrans. The billing rules are as follows:

💡 Usage Tip

The 100 credits given for free every day are sufficient for daily use. You can top up and purchase additional credits on the NiuTrans Open Platform if you exceed the quota.

💻 Usage Examples

Configuration example for the MCP client

If you install it via uv tool install, you can write the following in mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "translation": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "tool",
        "run",
        "mcp-translation-text"
      ],
      "env": {
        "NIUTRANS_API_KEY": "${env.NIUTRANS_API_KEY}"
      }
    }
  }
}

After starting Cursor, execute ListTools, and you will see translate_text. It also supports ListResources to read language://catalog.

Tool: translate_text

• Parameters:
  • text: The content to be translated.
  • source: The source language code or alias (which will be normalized through the local mapping table).
  • target: The target language code or alias.
• Return:

  {
    "source": "zh",
    "target": "en",
    "original_text": "你好",
    "translated_text": "Hello",
    "raw": { ... Original response from NiuTrans ... }
  }
  

Resource: language://catalog

It provides all available languages and their aliases. Here is an example:

{
  "total": 455,
  "languages": [
    {"code": "zh", "zh": "中文(简体)", "en": "Chinese (Simplified)"},
    {"code": "en", "zh": "英语", "en": "English"}
    // ... The rest is omitted ...
  ],
  "aliases": {
    "zhongwenjianti": "zh",
    "english": "en"
    // ... The rest is omitted ...
  }
}

It is recommended to read this resource in the LLM of the client first, complete the mapping from language descriptions to codes, and then call translate_text.

🐞 Debugging and Common Issues

• Missing API Key: If you encounter the error Missing environment variable NIUTRANS_API_KEY when starting, please confirm that you have set it in .env or the system environment.
• Unsupported language: translate_text will verify the language code/alias. If there is an error, please check if you are using the values listed in language://catalog.
• Path or dependency issues: The script depends on uv. Please install it first using pip install uv or refer to the uv documentation.
• Command name: After installing via PyPI, you can directly run mcp-translation-text. If it cannot be found in the global PATH, remember to activate the virtual environment or use python -m mcp_translation_text.
• Publish/Upgrade Package:

  python -m build
  twine upload dist/*
  

📁 Directory Structure (Key Files)

E:\MCP
├── pyproject.toml
├── server.py                # Entry wrapper to ensure python server.py can run
├── src/
│   └── translation_server.py
├── scripts/
│   ├── start.ps1
│   └── start.sh
├── .env.example
├── LICENSE
└── README.md

After the release, users only need to set the NiuTrans API Key and can directly load this Provider via mcp-translation-text.