CTranslate2 in Python

Support
1

Hi,

In the CTranslate2 documentation there’s a snippet of code indicating you could use the library in python:

import ctranslate2
translator = ctranslate2.Translator("ende_ctranslate2/", device="cpu")

input_tokens = ["▁H", "ello", "▁world", "!"]
result = translator.translate_batch([input_tokens])

print(result[0][0])

However, I don’t know how or where to get the ctranslate2 module (my IDE is unable to find it)

Could you give me any orientation to do it?

2

Currently, the easiest way to use the library is from the Docker images. For example if you followed the README to generate “ende_ctranslate2” you could try:

$ docker run -it --rm -v $PWD:/data --entrypoint python opennmt/ctranslate2:latest-ubuntu18
Python 2.7.15+ (default, Oct  7 2019, 17:39:04) 
[GCC 7.4.0] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import ctranslate2
>>> translator = ctranslate2.Translator("/data/ende_ctranslate2/", device="cpu")
>>> translator.translate_batch([["▁H", "ello", "▁world", "!"]])
[[{'tokens': ['\xe2\x96\x81Hallo', '\xe2\x96\x81Welt', '!'], 'score': -1.0516233444213867}]]

Would that work you?

3

Hi Guillaume,

Many thanks for your prompt reply.
Well, actually mi intention was to use it as a library inside an already working python project outside docker.
So I guess I would need to be able to deploy all that code as a Python package in the same way it was done inside the docker machine.
I actually tried, but I don’t know how to do it.

4

You could define an new Docker images starting with FROM opennmt/ctranslate2:latest-ubuntu18 which adds your projects and dependencies.

Or if you have a Linux distribution that matches one of the CTranslate2 Docker images, you could extract the Python package and install it on the host, for example:

$ docker run -it --rm -u $UID:$UID -v $PWD:/data --entrypoint cp \
    opennmt/ctranslate2:latest-ubuntu18 -r /opt/ctranslate2 /data/ctranslate2
$ pip install ctranslate2/ctranslate2-*.whl
$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$PWD/ctranslate2/lib
5

I am trying generate “ende_ctranslate2 python terminal” from Docker image with the following command:(in windows machine)
Volume mount: Converted model in my local folder

docker run -it --rm -v   //c/Users/Documents/python/cnvrtd_model:/data --entrypoint python opennmt/ctranslate2:latest-ubuntu18

Error:

docker: Error response from daemon: OCI runtime create failed: container_linux.go:346: starting container process caused "exec: \"python\": executable file not found in $PATH": unknown.

6

Maybe try with python3?