4

My website - www.forex-central.net - has the Google Translate drop-down widget on the top right of every page.

Only problem is it's a bit too wide for my website (5 cm), I would need a 4 cm version (which I've seen on other sites so I know this is possible)...but I have no idea how to tweak the code.

The code Google supplies for the widget I use is: 

<script type="text/javascript">function googleTranslateElementInit() { new google.translate.TranslateElement({ pageLanguage: 'en', gaTrack: true, layout: google.translate.TranslateElement.InlineLayout.SIMPLE }, 'google_translate_element');}</script><script type="text/javascript" src="//translate.google.com/translate_a/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit"></script>

Any help would be greatly appreciated! I'm a bit of a novice and have searched for hours on this, not getting anywhere :-/

Michael Benjamin
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buru
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3 Answers3

15

Something like this will get you started:

.goog-te-menu-frame {
    max-width:100% !important; //or whatever width you want
}

However, you would also need to do something like:

.goog-te-menu2 { //the element that contains the table of options
    max-width: 100% !important;
    overflow: scroll !important;
    box-sizing:border-box !important; //fixes a padding issue
    height:auto !important; //gets rid of vertical scroll caused by box-sizing
}

But that second part can't actually be done because the translate interface is included in your page as an iframe. Fortunately, it doesn't have its own domain, so we can access it via Javascript like this:

$('.goog-te-menu-frame').contents().find('.goog-te-menu2').css(
    {
        'max-width':'100%',
        'overflow':'scroll',
        'box-sizing':'border-box',
        'height':'auto'
    }
)

But that won't work until the element actually exists (it's being loaded asynchronously) so we have to wrap that in something that I got here. Put it all together, you get this:

function changeGoogleStyles() {
    if($('.goog-te-menu-frame').contents().find('.goog-te-menu2').length) {
        $('.goog-te-menu-frame').contents().find('.goog-te-menu2').css(
            {
                'max-width':'100%',
                'overflow':'scroll',
                'box-sizing':'border-box',
                'height':'auto'
            }
        )
    } else {
        setTimeout(changeGoogleStyles, 50);
    }
}
changeGoogleStyles();

Whew.

You can use that same strategy to apply other styles to the translate box or perhaps alter the table styles to have it flow vertically instead of scroll horizontally offscreen, whatever. See this answer.

EDIT:

Even this doesn't work, because Google re-applies the styles every time you click the dropdown. In this case, we try and change height and box-sizing, but Google reapplies over those, while overflow and max-width stick. What we need is to put our styles somewhere they won't get overriden and add !importants [cringes]. Inline styles will do the trick (I also replaced our selector with a variable for succinctness and what is likely a negligible performance boost):

function changeGoogleStyles() {
    if(($goog = $('.goog-te-menu-frame').contents().find('body')).length) {
        var stylesHtml = '<style>'+
            '.goog-te-menu2 {'+
                'max-width:100% !important;'+
                'overflow:scroll !important;'+
                'box-sizing:border-box !important;'+
                'height:auto !important;'+
            '}'+
        '</style>';
        $goog.prepend(stylesHtml);
    } else {
        setTimeout(changeGoogleStyles, 50);
    }
}
changeGoogleStyles();
Community
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Ethan C
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  • Scrolling gets disabled for me after a language is selected and I press the language widget again to switch to another language – allejo Feb 01 '16 at 23:39
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    Thanks, this works. (At least until they change the markup.) It's shocking to me that Google hasn't just made this responsive yet. – tated Feb 17 '17 at 20:14
  • I am just not winning with this but I know this solution must work, where must the function be placed and how does it get triggered every time the translate get's restyled? – MitchellK Jul 30 '18 at 11:05
3

The Google Translate widget creates an iframe with content from another domain (several files from Google servers). We would have to manipulate the content inside the iframe, but this so-called cross-site scripting did not work for me. I found another solution. I downloaded two of the many files which the widget uses, so I could edit them.

Bear in mind that Google can change its API anytime. The hack will have to be adapted then.

Prerequisite:
I assume that the widget is working on your website. You just want to fit it on smaller screens. My initial code looks like:

<div id="google_translate_element"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
    function googleTranslateElementInit()
    {
        new google.translate.TranslateElement({pageLanguage:'de', layout: google.translate.TranslateElement.InlineLayout.SIMPLE}, 'google_translate_element');
    }
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="//translate.google.com/translate_a/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit"></script>

If your initial code looks different, you might have to adapt your solution accordingly.

Special tools used:
Chrome DevTools (adapt for other browsers)

Procedure:

  1. In Google Chrome, right-click on your page containing the Google Translate widget.
  2. Click Inspect. A window or side pane will apper with lots of HTML info.
  3. In the top line, select the Sources tab.

  4. Browse the sources tree to

    /top/translate.google.com/translate_a/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit

  5. Click the file in the tree. The file content will be shown.

  6. Under the code window of element.js, there is a little button with two curly brackets { }. Click this. It will sort the code for better readability. We will need this readability in the next steps.

  7. Right-click inside the element.js code > Save as…. Save the file inside the files hierarchy of your website, in my case:

    /framework/google-translate-widget/element.js

  8. Point your <script> tag to the local element.js.

    <!--<script type="text/javascript" src="//translate.google.com/translate_a/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit"></script>-->
    <script type="text/javascript" src="../framework/google-translate-widget/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit"></script>

  9. From now on, your website should load element.js from its local directory. Now is a good moment to check if your Google Translate widget still works. Also check in Chrome DevTools where the browser has taken the file from (Google server or local directory). It should sit in the sources tree under

    /top/[your domain or IP]/framework/google-translate-widget/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit

  10. We need another file from Google servers. Browse the sources tree to

    /top/translate.googleapis.com/translate_static/css/translateelement.css

    Download this file after clicking the curly brackets { }. I saved it in my website files directory as

    /framework/google-translate-widget/translateelement.css

  11. In your website files directory, open element.js and change line 66:

    //c._ps = b + '/translate_static/css/translateelement.css';
c._ps = '/framework/google-translate-widget/translateelement.css';

    From now on, your website will also load translateelement.css from its local directory. Check this now.

  12. Open your local translateeleent.css and append the following styles at the end:

    /* Make all languages visible on small screens. */
.goog-te-menu2 {
    width: 300px!important;
    height: 300px!important;
    overflow: auto!important;
}
.goog-te-menu2 table,
.goog-te-menu2 table tbody,
.goog-te-menu2 table tbody tr {
    width: 100%!important;
    height: 100%!important;
}
.goog-te-menu2 table tbody tr td {
    width: 100%!important;
    display: block!important;
}
.goog-te-menu2 table tbody tr td .goog-te-menu2-colpad {
    visibility: none!important;
}

    I borrowed the code from another answer: Google translate widget mobile overflow

  13. The geometry might work now, but we broke another thing. The widget text showing “Select Language”, “Sélectionner une langue”, or whatever it says in you language, is locked to that language now. Since you want your other-language readers to understand the offer, the widget should adapt to their language as it used to work before our hack. Also, the listed languages’ names are affected. The reason for this bug can be found in the file element.js, which was silently tailored to our browser’s language setting. Look in element.js on lines 51 and 69

    c._cl = 'fr';

    _loadJs(b + '/translate_static/js/element/main_fr.js');

    In my case, it was set to French (fr).

    Correcting line 51 is as simple as

    c._cl = 'auto'; //'fr';

  14. Line 61 is trickier, because there is no 'auto' value available. There is a file main.js (without the _fr ending) available on Google servers, which provides English as a fallback, but we prefer the user’s language. Have a look in the file

    /top/translate.googleapis.com/translate_a/l?client=…

    It contains two objects. sl and tl meaning the source languages and target languages supported for translation. We have to check if the user’s browser is set to one of the target languages. There is a JavaScript constant navigator.language for this.

  15. Edit element.js at line 69:

    // determine browser language to display Google Translate widget in that language
var nl = navigator.language;
var tl = ["af","sq","am","ar","hy","az","eu","bn","my","bs","bg","ceb","ny",
          "zh-TW","zh-CN","da","de","en","eo","et","tl","fi","fr","fy","gl",
          "ka","el","gu","ht","ha","haw","iw","hi","hmn","ig","id","ga","is",
          "it","ja","jw","yi","kn","kk","ca","km","rw","ky","ko","co","hr",
          "ku","lo","la","lv","lt","lb","mg","ml","ms","mt","mi","mr","mk",
          "mn","ne","nl","no","or","ps","fa","pl","pt","pa","ro","ru","sm",
          "gd","sv","sr","st","sn","sd","si","sk","sl","so","es","sw","su",
          "tg","ta","tt","te","th","cs","tr","tk","ug","uk","hu","ur","uz",
          "vi","cy","be","xh","yo","zu"];
var gl = "";
if( tl.includes( nl )) gl = '_'+nl;
else
{
    nl = nl.substring(0, 3);
    if( tl.includes( nl)) gl = '_'+nl;
    else
    {
        nl = nl.substring(0, 2);
        if( tl.includes( nl)) gl = '_'+nl;
        else gl = '';
    }
}
_loadJs(b + '/translate_static/js/element/main'+gl+'.js');
//_loadJs(b + '/translate_static/js/element/main_fr.js');

… should do the trick.

Tils
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0

Try using this in your CSS

 .pac-container, .pac-item { width: 100px !important;}

where you can alter the with of the dropdown by altering 'the 100px' value.

This should work. Let me know if it doesn't and I'll have another look.

Izaak
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