Expose Dialect as a reusable translation service for other GNOME apps

[maxime-monroux]

Hi,

First of all, thank you for your work on Dialect.

Dialect already provides translation through several providers and fits very well into the GNOME ecosystem.

I would like to suggest exposing Dialect as a reusable translation service for other GNOME apps.

Use case:

Apps such as GNOME Web, NewsFlash, Tuba, or other reading/social apps often display foreign-language text. Instead of each app implementing its own translation system, they could call Dialect or a shared GNOME translation interface.

Possible actions exposed to other apps:

• translate selected text;
• translate a full article/page/post;
• detect source language automatically;
• translate to the user’s system language by default;
• reuse Dialect’s configured provider;
• handle provider limits for long text, for example by chunking paragraphs or returning a clear error.

This would make Dialect the common translation foundation for GNOME apps, instead of forcing users to manually copy text from one app, open Dialect, paste, translate, and go back.

I understand this may require a D-Bus API, portal-like interface, or another integration mechanism, and that privacy/provider limits/API keys would need careful handling.

The goal is simple: make GNOME apps work better together by allowing apps to delegate translation to Dialect.