Anki Deck Generator

Anki is the most popular flash card program out there. The public decks I've come across vary in quality and making your own is all the rage.

This script takes a list of English words and:

1. Translates each one using Google Translate
2. Generates an audio file of the word/phrase being pronounced in the target language
3. Puts it all into an Anki deck (.apkg)

Prerequisites

1. Google Cloud Setup:

   • Enable the Google Cloud Translate API and Google Cloud Text-to-Speech API.
   • Create a service account and download the JSON key file.

2. Install Required Libraries:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

Running the Script

The generate_anki_deck.py script automates the entire process.

python generate_anki_deck.py input_csv output_dir google_credentials_json output_apkg deck_name language_code [--voice_name VOICE_NAME] [--speaking_rate SPEAKING_RATE]

• input_csv: Path to the input CSV file with English text.
• google_credentials_json: Path to the Google Cloud service account JSON key file.
• output_apkg: Path to the output Anki package file (.apkg).
• deck_name: Name of the Anki deck.
• language_code: Target language code for translation and TTS (e.g., "ru" for Russian).
• --voice_name: (Optional) Voice name for TTS (default: ru-RU-Standard-C).
• --speaking_rate: (Optional) Speaking rate for TTS (default: 0.75).

Example:

python generate_anki_deck.py examples/flashcards.csv google_credentials.json ru_food_beginner.apkg "[RU] Food - Beginner I" ru --voice_name ru-RU-Standard-C --speaking_rate 0.75

Customizing for Other Languages

To customize for other languages:

1. Change the language_code argument to the desired target language code (e.g., es for Spanish).
2. Adjust the voice_name and speaking_rate arguments as needed. Refer to the Google Cloud Text-to-Speech documentation for available voice names and language codes.

Input CSV Format

The input CSV should have the following format:

English
Hello
Thank you