[Web4lib] Language Translation on website

[Thomas Dowling]

On 7/3/2007 4:06 PM, Sharon Logan wrote:

> We are interested in providing translated pages on our website.  We
> would like to use several languages.  Those I have talked with have used
> actual staff to translate their pages for them.  I am wondering if there
> is reliable translation software out there for accomplishing this task.
> 


We offer translation links on our ETDs to users who present a preferred
language other than English.  As Mike Taylor already posted, the quality
of translation you get from automated services is not what you get from
a good human translator, so adjust your expectations accordingly.

Babelfish and Google are the two most prominent services for online,
automated translation.  I've heard speakers of a couple other languages
say that Babelfish translations are a little less stilted, but it's a
lot simpler to link to Google.  If they handle the language you want,
you just need to grab the two-letter ISO codes for the original and
target languages (say, "en" and "es" for English to Spanish) and plug it
into:

  http://translate.google.com/translate?
  u=[URL of page to translate, hex-escaped for inclusion in a URL]
  &langpair=en%7Ces
  &hl=en
  &ie=UTF-8
  &oe=UTF-8
  &prev=


[Line breaks added for readability.]


If you already have translations on hand, Apache has a built-in way to
serve up the version in the user's preferred language with the
AddLanguage and LanguagePriority directives.

Re: translated library pages.  As part of a talk on user-centered site
design, I once set my browser's preferred language to Spanish and ran
through the public library home pages in the 25 U.S. cities with highest
per capita Spanish-speaking populations.  Not a one of them came up in
Spanish and precious few even showed a link to a Spanish version.  But
Google and Google Scholar automatically came up in Spanish.


-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu