3Speak Translator

Translation and subtitle services for 3speak.tv, powered by LibreTranslate and a custom subtitle API.

Overview

Two Docker services:

• LibreTranslate (port 5000) — self-hosted translation for comment sections across the 3speak.tv frontend. Supports 34 languages with automatic source language detection.
• Subtitle API (port 3300) — lightweight Node.js service that queries MongoDB for available video subtitles by author/permlink.

Requirements

• Docker & Docker Compose
• ~5 GB RAM (for language models)
• ~3 GB disk (models are downloaded on first start and persisted in a Docker volume)
• MongoDB connection (for subtitle API)

Quick Start

cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your MongoDB connection string
docker compose up -d

First startup takes a few minutes while language models download. Subsequent starts are instant.

Test

# Translation
curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/translate \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"q":"Hello world","source":"en","target":"de","format":"text"}'

# Subtitles
curl http://localhost:3300/subtitles/cryptomorfosis/f353d7b5

Supported Languages

English, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, French, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, German, Korean, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Ukrainian, Swedish, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Finnish, Danish, Romanian, Hebrew, Persian, Tagalog, Malay, Bulgarian, Norwegian, Urdu

API

LibreTranslate (port 5000)

• POST /translate - Translate text
• GET /languages - List available languages
• POST /detect - Detect language of text

See LibreTranslate API docs for full reference.

Subtitle API (port 3300)

• GET /subtitles/:author/:permlink - Get available subtitles for a video
• GET /health - Health check

Example:

curl http://localhost:3300/subtitles/cryptomorfosis/f353d7b5

Response:

[
  { "lang": "en", "cid": "QmZw3G6RKvRu2PiKBHErXHmhYiWCYoySBNXFeUojxvzUNh" },
  { "lang": "es", "cid": "Qma4MA9AUDrPsykwGfukWzzohq5pfkagNkFUdbNG8xqz3n" }
]

Returns 404 if no subtitles exist for the given author/permlink.

Configuration

Variable	Default	Description
LT_LOAD_ONLY	34 languages	Comma-separated language codes to load
LT_API_KEYS	false	Require API keys (disabled for local use)
MONGODB_URI	—	MongoDB connection string (required for subtitle API)
DATABASE_NAME	threespeak	MongoDB database name
COLLECTION_NAME	subtitles	MongoDB collection name
API_PORT	3300	Port for the subtitle API

Nginx Setup

An example nginx config is provided in nginx/translator.conf.example.

To set it up on your server:

# Copy and rename with your domain
sudo cp nginx/translator.conf.example /etc/nginx/sites-available/translator.yourdomain.com

# Edit the file and replace translator.example.com with your domain
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/translator.yourdomain.com

# Enable the site
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/translator.yourdomain.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

# Test and reload nginx
sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx

# Obtain SSL certificate
sudo certbot --nginx -d translator.yourdomain.com

The 3speak.tv frontend connects via the VITE_TRANSLATE_API_URL environment variable.

Monitoring

docker compose ps
docker logs -f 3speak-translate
docker logs -f 3speak-subtitle-api