[WEB4LIB] Translation software

[Andrew Cunningham]

Hi Steve,

>From personal experience, creating a multilingual site form scratch would
be more preferable than providing machine translation interfaces. There are
a number of machine translation possibilities out there that people can use
for free, if they really want to, and netscape 6 has built in support for
linking to a site translation engine, under the view menu.

so far machine translation technologies have a long way to go before the
accuracy is appropriate for every day usage. 

Also, if you wish to use machine translation, you would have to rewrite the
entire site into "plain english" avoiding any technical terms,
colloquialisms, dialectical variations, etc.

safer to use human translators and mark up the site.

also need to consider liability and legal issues of poor translations, if
you insist on using machine translation technologies. You have much more
precise control over meaning and content if you create a multilingual ste,
using tarnslations by professional translators.

within a couple of months i hope to have a site up discussing multilingual
web design and looking at issues such as human translation , memory
translation aids, and machine translation.

Andj.


Andrew Cunningham
Multilingual Technical Project Officer
Accessibility and Evaluation Unit, Vicnet
State Library of Victoria, Australia.

andrewc at vicnet.net.au

http://go.to/andj/



At 07:43 AM 3/2/01 -0800, Garwood, Steve wrote:
>Just wondering if anyone has experience with Translation software for their
>website such as Systran?
>
>At our library we're thinking of using something like this to provide more
>access to our website for those who speak other languages. In general, I
>haven't been too impressed by translation software, but I'd love to hear
>some of your opinions.
>
>Steve
>
>-------------------------------------
>Steve Garwood
>Customer Education Librarian
>Camden County Library System
>203 Laurel Rd., Voorhees, NJ 08043
>(856)772-1636 x3320 Fax:(856)772-6128
>sgarwood at camden.lib.nj.us
>http://www.camden.lib.nj.us
>http://www.stevegarwood.com
>
>"Nobody loves me but my mother...and she could be jivin too"  - B.B. King
>
>