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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-25T06:46:56+00:00

I’m making a Java console application that needs to send an HTTP request to

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I’m making a Java console application that needs to send an HTTP request to Google Translate to get a translation from the aforementioned site.

My problem, is that I receive a 403 error when I try to read from a valid URL, using openStream().

Creating an instance of this Translator class with Translator t = new Translator(); and calling t.translate("en", "ja", "cheese");, for example, should return the translation the program finds on the page http://translate.google.com/#en|ja|cheese, it seems, but instead it catches an IOException and returns this:

http://translate.google.com/#en|ja|cheese
Server returned HTTP response code: 403 for URL: http://translate.google.com/#en|ja|cheese

A similar error occurs with any other arguments that create a valid Google Translate URL.

A 403 error apparently means I am denied permission. This is what I want to know about. Why can’t I access this page, and what must I do in order to access it?

I’ve visited the site in my web browser, and entered the address that my program tries to access, manually, but it worked; I’m not sure why my program thus cannot access the page? Typing or copy/pasting the address into my FireFox navigation bar works; see, if this is correct, then the site may be wanting me to access the page via links on another page? How might I go about that, if that’s what I must do?

Here’s the code, as I think it may help.. the exception seems to be thrown when I try to create a BufferedReader from an InputStreamReader from the InputStream returned by translationURL.openStream():

import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;

public class Translator {

    private final String googleTranslate = "http://translate.google.com/#";

    public String translate( String from, String to, String item ) {

        String translation = googleTranslate + from + '|' + to + '|' + item;
        URL translationURL;

        try { translationURL = new URL(translation); }
        catch(MalformedURLException e) { return e.getMessage(); }

        BufferedReader httpin;
        String fullPage = "";
        System.out.println(translation);
        try {
            httpin = new BufferedReader(
                    new InputStreamReader(translationURL.openStream()));
            String line;
            while((line=httpin.readLine()) != null) { fullPage += line + '\n'; }
            httpin.close();
        } catch(IOException e) { return e.getMessage(); }

        int begin = fullPage.indexOf("<span class=\"\">");
        int end = fullPage.indexOf("</span>");

        return fullPage.substring(begin + 15, end);

    }

    public Translator() {}
}

I am testing this code in Eclipse (GALILEO) on Ubuntu Linux 11.04, installed with Wubi, with a working and reliable wireless Internet connection. I’ve also tried running it in the command line, but the behavior was the same. java -version got me this:

java version "1.6.0_22"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.10.2) (6b22-1.10.2-0ubuntu1~11.04.1)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.0-b11, mixed mode)

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    They are looking at the user agent string, and presumably they don’t want people doing this programatically.

    I did get your code working working, but since Google charges for the API access and they are actively blocking things that are not browsers (based on the user agent string) I won’t tell you how I did it.

    A google search for setting the user agent string in Java will get you what you want (as a matter of fact I found the answer here on Stackoverflow).

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