The Best Discord Translator Bot in 2024 & How to Set It Up

Initially intended for gamers, Discord has now evolved into a full blown messaging app where entire communities can keep in touch and discuss whatever topic they’re passionate about; games, anime, movies, coding,, literally anything.

Naturally, you can assume that large communities tend to have people of different nationalities, and some of the users might not know English. There are also multiple servers that aim to learn or improve on a specific language. What all of them need is a translator bot. But which translator bot is the best one? Read on to find out!

How Do Discord Bots Work?

Before we talk about the best translator bot, let’s talk about what a Discord bot is in general. Discord bots are automated scripts developed the multitude of Discord users to perform specific functions. They respond to their designated commands and can only perform the functions programmed in them. The amount of bots with diverse and feature-rich functions are why Discord is popular in the first place.

The most common kind of bot is a music bot. It is usually called upon by a prefix, which is usually a special character like “!”, “/”, “.”, etc. When called upon, a user present in a voice channel can input a song name and request the bot to play it in a voice channel. The bot will then search for the name input by the user within its programmed database and then play the song, if it finds it.

READ MORE: Beginner’s Guide – Create a Simple Discord Bot using Node.js ➜

What is a Translator Bot?

A translator bot in Discord is a bot designed to translate languages within a Discord server. As mentioned earlier, there are many communities in Discord where the members have different nationalities. Not all members may be as fluent in English as everyone else, therefore, a translator bot can help them out by translating their messages for everyone else.

The Best Translator Bot on Discord — iTranslator

We tested out several bots, and found iTranslator to be the clear victor. Although a freemium bot (offering both free and premium versions), iTranslator has all the essentials you’ll need for a Discord bot; auto-translation, manual translation, translation in DMs (direct messages) and support for multiple languages. You can check out the full set of features in the bot’s documentation.

1. Adding iTranslator to your server

Before you can make use of iTranslator, you’ll obviously need to add it to your Discord server. Follow the steps below to do so:

1. First, open up your web browser and open up the iTranslator website. Click on the Add to Discord button.
   

   

2. As soon as you click on the button, a new tab will open up and ask for your Discord login credentials. Login to Discord using your credentials or scan the QR code on the right using the Discord Mobile app.
   

   

3. Next, you will be asked whether you want to test the bot or add it to a server. Choose the Add to Server option.
   

   

4. Now, you’ll need to choose the server where you would like to add the bot. Click on the drop-down to select your server and click on Continue.
   

   

5. On the next page, you can check which permissions are going to be granted to the bot. Scroll down and click on Authorize.
   

   

6. Finally, you’ll see a message that iTranslator has been added to your server. Click on the button shown to open up your server, or open up your Discord app.
   

   

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2. Using the iTranslator bot for normal translations

Now, that the iTranslator bot is in your server, try it out by following the steps below:

1. Open up your server on Discord and navigate to any text channel. Type “/translate” and select the first option that pops up on the suggestions list.
   

   

2. Now, type the text that needs to be translated in the “text” section and choose English in the “target_language” section.
   

   

3. As soon as you finish typing in English in the “target_language” section, another option should become available to you from the suggestions list; the “source_language” option. Click on it.
   

   

4. Finally, enter the language of the text you entered in the “text” section in the “source_language” section.
   

   

5. Now, hit Enter or click on the Send button and see the magic for yourself!
   

   

6. As you can see, it is a pretty accurate translation.
   

   

7. If you want to send a message in a foreign language using the bot, you can switch up the languages in the “source_language” and “target_language” sections and type the text in English.
   

   

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3. Using the iTranslator bot for automated translations

Another great thing about the translator bot is that you can set it up to automatically translate messages and display them in English or any other language.

1. On any text channel on your Discord server, type “/autotranslate“. From the suggestions list, scroll down until you see the option “/autotranslate create” and click on it.
   

   

2. Some parameters should become available to you on your input box. The first will be the “name” option. You can put the name as anything you want really, so we’re putting it as “german-english“.
   

   

3. Then, we have the “source_channel” option. This is the text channel where the translator will receive the texts to be translated. Set it to your desired text channel.
   

   

4. Next, we’ll have the “target_channel” option, which will designate the text channel where the translated texts will be output. You can choose the same channel as the “source_channel” or a different text channel.
   

   

5. After the channels have been designated, it’s time to select the output language of the translated language under the “target_language” option.
   

   

6. Now, you’ll need to add the “source_language” option. Position the cursor outside of the “target_language” option and it should show up on the top of the suggestions list automatically. Click on it to select it.
   

   

7. Lastly, select the language you’ll be translating using the “source_language” option.
   

   

8. Finally, hit Enter or hit the Send button and test out your new translation mechanic!
   

   

9. As you can see, it works perfectly fine!
   

   

READ MORE: The 8 Best Discord Music Bots That Still Work in 2024 ➜

Alternatives to iTranslator on Discord

iTranslator is pretty straightforward and its free version is more than good enough in most cases. However, if you’d like to keep your options open, we can list down some alternatives that caught our eye too.

1. Translator

The Translator bot from nvu is a great alternative to iTranslator. With support for even more languages and offering the same features as iTranslator (auto-translation, DMs translation, manual translation, etc.), it is quite indeed a better option than iTranslator. However, it has a strict 5000 character limit and after that it requires a paid subscription of $10 per 20000 characters.

2. Interaction Bot

The Interaction Bot is another bot that can go head to head against iTranslator. It has the same functionality as its rival, and in addition to auto-translation, you can also designate roles that are to be auto-translated. It also has text-to-speech. However, there is a set limit for how many roles and channels you can designate for auto-translation, which can only be exceeded with a premium subscription.

3. JakeBot

JakeBot is a feature-rich translation bot that offers multiple features beside translation like roleplay, trivia, and wordclouds. That doesn’t diminish its translation ability; auto-translation with blacklist and whitelist functionalities and support for a wide range of languages. But, you can only set up auto-translation for 8 channels, and it can be quite overwhelming to use.

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Conclusion

Irrespective of what our top pick is, at the end of the day, the choice rests with you. You can try out any translation bot, even those not listed here; as long as they fulfill their designated function. Although, we heartily recommend using iTranslator due to its simplicity and quick functioning.