Fwd: Google Translate in the header of Appropedia?

[Chris Watkins]

Machine translations are getting much better. I've been wondering about how to use them for Appropedia. Now I just got this message from Reinder van Tijen:

Maybe you like the following idea for the Appropedia pages, that a my webmaster realized at our Hy2U.org website: a bar with clickable flags of all languages the page can be translated in. It works well enough. Try Swahili (Tanzania flag)!

Is it time to integrate something like this into our site? We could do it as a template (on every page, not nice) but integrating into our skin would be better.

And the best way to implement? A drop-down menu of languages is one option, perhaps with the flags on the front page and navigation pages?


--
Chris Watkins

Appropedia.org - Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.

blogs.appropedia.org
identi.ca/appropedia
twitter.com/appropedia

[Chris Watkins]

And I see the solarcooking wiki has something similar e.g. here, with a {{GoogleTranslateLinks}} template. That's not bad actually - we could copy that and try it out.

There are a few wonky translations (e.g. "hit upon a really simple..." turned into nonsense in Indonesian) but much of it makes sense, so let's try it and see what non-English speakers think, especially those with no functional English reading skills.

I'll be back in January - would someone in the community like to take the lead on this in the meantime?

Adios!
Chris