Filed under: Web services, Google, Web
Google launches universal translation tool for web publishers
For instance, if you publish a web site in English but notice that a significant portion of your traffic comes from Germany, Japan, or elsewhere you can add a box to your sidebar (or anywhere on your web page) that lets readers choose their language from a drop-down menu. Google wil go to work translating the page and a small toolbar will pop up at the top of the page alerting readers tot he fact that the page has been translated. There's also a button to restore the site to its original language.
The most obvious benefit is that readers can translate your page without copying and pasting the URL into Google Translate. But there are a few other advantages as well. First, the tool adds a few letters to the end of the URL for any translated page, but it doesn't append "translate.google.com" to the start of the page, thereby robbing you of page views.
Second, if your site is in English and a visitor's browser settings are set to, say, Estonian, the toolbar should pop up automatically prompting them to translate the page. This could make your site a heck of a lot more attractive to international traffic.
Of course, the results are only as good as Google Translate's normal translations, which is to say, not very. While you can usually get the gist of articles translated by the service, you wouldn't really want to read literature converted from Russian to English via Google.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Prof. Michael Stoll said 7:59AM on 10-02-2009
machine translation's reputation is based mainly on the fact that most people do not speak one of the two languages. i.e. the german in your screenshot is total garbage. one can easily make a whole language course laugh, when presenting them with google translation. there are other services around that include human review. worth an article on downloadsquad?
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Jim Making Sense said 7:59AM on 10-02-2009
This is an interesting new option, but your last paragraph makes a really important point.
It depends how crucial accuracy is to you. I recently blogged about this kind of machine translation at "Making Sense" (worldaccent.com/blog) and, more importantly, its dangers. It can be great for getting the gist of something, but is also often way off beam.
If a user runs your website through Google translate, they know it's at their own risk. If you have "provided" a translation, aren't you more responsible for what it says? As Bing Translator warns you every time you use it: "Automatic translation can help you understand the gist of the translated text but is no substitute for a professional human translator."
And, unless you speak the target language, how do you know if your website is being rendered in perfect prose or as unintelligible gibberish? If you care about what "you" are saying in translation, you're still best off sticking to a human translator.
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Shan said 7:59AM on 10-02-2009
Does this work with sites that require a login/pass eg. Discussion forums (vBulletin/Invision)?
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