Installation

Requirements

  • PHP 8.2 or higher
  • Laravel 11, 12 or 13 (Laravel 13 itself needs PHP 8.3)
  • A Google Cloud Translation API key, from a Google Cloud project with billing enabled

The package needs nothing else: no migration of its own, no queue, no Livewire.

1. Install the package 

composer require darvis/laravel-google-translate

Laravel discovers the service provider by itself; there is nothing to register.

2. Create an API key at Google

The package talks to the Cloud Translation API v2 (“Basic”) with an API key. You create that key in the Google Cloud console:

  1. Open the Google Cloud console and pick or create a project.
  2. Make sure billing is enabled for the project. Google requires it for Cloud Translation; see Google’s setup guide.
  3. Enable the Cloud Translation API for that project.
  4. Go to the Credentials page, click Create credentials and choose API key.
  5. Restrict the key. Under API restrictions, allow only the Cloud Translation API. Under Application restrictions, allow only the IP addresses of your servers when those are fixed. Google explains both in Manage API keys.

The calls come from your server, not from a browser, and the package sends no Referer header. So when you add an application restriction, choose IP addresses, not websites (HTTP referrers).

3. Put the key and the locales in .env 

GOOGLE_TRANSLATE_API_KEY=your-api-key
GOOGLE_TRANSLATE_SOURCE_LOCALE=nl
GOOGLE_TRANSLATE_TARGET_LOCALES=en,de,fr
Variable Config key Default Meaning
GOOGLE_TRANSLATE_API_KEY google-translate.api_key none Without a key nothing is sent to Google, and every method returns null or an empty array.
GOOGLE_TRANSLATE_SOURCE_LOCALE google-translate.source_locale nl The language your original content is written in. Set it to en when your content is English.
GOOGLE_TRANSLATE_TARGET_LOCALES google-translate.target_locales en Comma separated. The package does not loop over them for you; getTargetLocales() returns the list so your code can.

Use the language codes Google knows, such as en, de or fr, not en_US. Google publishes the list of supported languages.

On a server that caches its config, run php artisan config:clear (or php artisan config:cache again) after you change .env. Until then the old values stay in use.

4. Optional: publish the config file

You only need this when you want to set the values in PHP instead of in .env:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=google-translate-config

This writes config/google-translate.php with the three keys from the table above.

Check that it works

Open php artisan tinker and first run the check that costs nothing:

use Darvis\LaravelGoogleTranslate\GoogleTranslateService;

$translator = app(GoogleTranslateService::class);

$translator->isAvailable();
// true

isAvailable() only looks at the config. It sends nothing to Google, so it is free, and it tells you whether the package can see your key.

  • true: the key is set. Go on to the real call.
  • false: GOOGLE_TRANSLATE_API_KEY is missing or empty, or the config is cached. See isAvailable() returns false.

Then make one real call. This sends five characters to Google:

$translator->translate('Hallo', 'en', 'nl');
// a string such as "Hello"
  • A translated string: everything works.
  • null: Google refused the call or could not be reached. The reason is in your log (storage/logs/laravel.log by default) on a line that starts with Google Translate failed: . See Troubleshooting.

isAvailable() returning true does not prove that the key is valid; only a real call does.

Laravel Boost

The package ships a Laravel Boost guideline and a skill in resources/boost/. Run php artisan boost:install, or php artisan boost:update --discover in a project that already uses Boost, and the AI assistant in your project knows the API, the table layout and the pitfalls.

Next steps