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Multilingual Websites?
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Rhino
Dec 30, 2011, 9:20:10 AM12/30/11
to
What are the best ways to do multilingual websites these days?
I would dearly love to be able to develop a website in English and then make
it multilingual without having to develop any new webpages at all, just
provide the text on that page in the user's preferred language.
For example, to take the trivial example of a Hello World page, I'd like to
be able to develop the page in English, then make it multilingual so that
the user selects his preferred language from a drop down list (or whatever)
that then renders the exact same web page but displays the text in the
user's language, such as "Bonjour le Monde!" or "Hallo Welt!".
Is that possible?
If not, what are the other ways at my disposal? I'd strongly prefer
techniques that DON'T involve having to have separate copies of each page
for each language since it is very hard to keep the pages in sync; once you
start messing with one version of the page, it's a hassle to have to
remember to modify the other language versions of the page so that they are
exactly the same.
I know that the single-page-for-every-language approach is likely to be
impractical once I start getting into Right-to-left vs. Left-to-right
languages but I'm hoping it could be made to work for European languages.
Maybe I'm overoptimistic though.
I'd be grateful for any insights and suggestions obtained by people who have
done multilingual sites so that I can find the best way forward.
--
Rhino
I would dearly love to be able to develop a website in English and then make
it multilingual without having to develop any new webpages at all, just
provide the text on that page in the user's preferred language.
For example, to take the trivial example of a Hello World page, I'd like to
be able to develop the page in English, then make it multilingual so that
the user selects his preferred language from a drop down list (or whatever)
that then renders the exact same web page but displays the text in the
user's language, such as "Bonjour le Monde!" or "Hallo Welt!".
Is that possible?
If not, what are the other ways at my disposal? I'd strongly prefer
techniques that DON'T involve having to have separate copies of each page
for each language since it is very hard to keep the pages in sync; once you
start messing with one version of the page, it's a hassle to have to
remember to modify the other language versions of the page so that they are
exactly the same.
I know that the single-page-for-every-language approach is likely to be
impractical once I start getting into Right-to-left vs. Left-to-right
languages but I'm hoping it could be made to work for European languages.
Maybe I'm overoptimistic though.
I'd be grateful for any insights and suggestions obtained by people who have
done multilingual sites so that I can find the best way forward.
--
Rhino
tlvp
Dec 30, 2011, 3:11:54 PM12/30/11
to
On Fri, 30 Dec 2011 09:20:10 -0500, Rhino wrote:
> What are the best ways to do multilingual websites these days?
>
> I would dearly love to be able to develop a website in English and then make
> it multilingual without having to develop any new webpages at all, just
> provide the text on that page in the user's preferred language. ...
> What are the best ways to do multilingual websites these days?
>
> I would dearly love to be able to develop a website in English and then make
> it multilingual without having to develop any new webpages at all, just
I'm hardly the go-to person for this approach, but perhaps having each
language triggered by some sort of CSS event would let you put everything
you want to say, in all releant languages, into the page in separate DIVs,
with a "class= " for each language, and CSS letting only the relevant
language get displayed. Details? Sorry, not from me, I'm beyond my depth as
it is in these waters: what my client and I do in Polish and English we
just do in separate Polish pages and English pages :-) .
HTH; and cheers, -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.
Jukka K. Korpela
Dec 30, 2011, 3:30:25 PM12/30/11
to
(Sorry for possible duplication - newsreader / news server issues.)
2011-12-30 16:20, Rhino wrote:
> What are the best ways to do multilingual websites these days?
It depends on the size and nature of the site, the amount and type of
languages, and the available (server-side) technologies.
> I would dearly love to be able to develop a website in English and then
> make it multilingual without having to develop any new webpages at all,
> just provide the text on that page in the user's preferred language.
It's not that simple, to put it mildly. There are dozens of things that
are language-dependent, beyond the obvious case of text content. One
could write a book on this. Actually, dozens if not hundreds of books
have been written about it.
A few examples of language dependencies that might not be obvious to all:
a) number notations: most languages do not use decimal point
b) layout direction: in Arabic, texts should be right-aligned, table
columns should go from right to left, etc.
c) colors: in Chinese, red is a positive color, e.g. indicating gains
(not losses) in stock market info
d) "hidden" texts: there are many texts that are normally not visible
when HTML documents are viewed, yet need to be in a proper language
(e.g., alt and title attribute values, some <meta> tag contents, not to
mention <title> elements)
e) width requirements: even if you have fairly fluid layout (and many
sites don't), there will be situations where you run into trouble
because the translated text is double the size of the original
f) links: when you link to external sites, you should normally try to
find a suitable language version - this can be nontrivial, and my
experience suggests that the average lifetime of language-specific links
is about one year, as opposite to the two or three years for links in
general (e.g., language-specific links may require a query part, which
relies on specific server technology and arrangements on the external
server)
g) JavaScript - if your page has any JavaScript, then it probably has
translation issues, and this is something about which I _have_ written a
book (http://www.bytelevelbooks.com/books/global_javascript.html)
> For example, to take the trivial example of a Hello World page, I'd like
> to be able to develop the page in English, then make it multilingual so
> that the user selects his preferred language from a drop down list (or
> whatever) that then renders the exact same web page but displays the
> text in the user's language, such as "Bonjour le Monde!" or "Hallo
Welt!".
>
> Is that possible?
Yes, there are many technologies for dealing with such issues. They
might even have built-in systems that let you send all the modified
texts, in XML format, automatically to your translation agency and have
the translated texts delivered automatically into your server. As you
may guess, such things tend to work _much_ better in theory than in
practice. And don't expect them to be cheap. And quality control will be
difficult to arrange: even if the translators are highly competent, what
guarantees that all the translations will work fine in the context that
the translators didn't really see when doing their job?
> I'd strongly prefer
> techniques that DON'T involve having to have separate copies of each
> page for each language since it is very hard to keep the pages in sync;
> once you start messing with one version of the page, it's a hassle to
> have to remember to modify the other language versions of the page so
> that they are exactly the same.
One way of dealing this is to submit the entire page to translation
after any change, relying on Translation Memory (TM) to take care of
parts that haven't been changed. But there are pitfalls in this, and you
might still need to pay for the TM usage.
> I know that the single-page-for-every-language approach is likely to be
> impractical once I start getting into Right-to-left vs. Left-to-right
> languages but I'm hoping it could be made to work for European
> languages. Maybe I'm overoptimistic though.
Do you mean that a single page would contain different language
versions? This would mean that you need to rely on JavaScript to show
the right language version. I wouldn't be worried about the data
transfer overhead these days, as a rule, but what do you think search
engines would see? A total mix of languages, perhaps.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
2011-12-30 16:20, Rhino wrote:
> What are the best ways to do multilingual websites these days?
languages, and the available (server-side) technologies.
> I would dearly love to be able to develop a website in English and then
> make it multilingual without having to develop any new webpages at all,
> just provide the text on that page in the user's preferred language.
are language-dependent, beyond the obvious case of text content. One
could write a book on this. Actually, dozens if not hundreds of books
have been written about it.
A few examples of language dependencies that might not be obvious to all:
a) number notations: most languages do not use decimal point
b) layout direction: in Arabic, texts should be right-aligned, table
columns should go from right to left, etc.
c) colors: in Chinese, red is a positive color, e.g. indicating gains
(not losses) in stock market info
d) "hidden" texts: there are many texts that are normally not visible
when HTML documents are viewed, yet need to be in a proper language
(e.g., alt and title attribute values, some <meta> tag contents, not to
mention <title> elements)
e) width requirements: even if you have fairly fluid layout (and many
sites don't), there will be situations where you run into trouble
because the translated text is double the size of the original
f) links: when you link to external sites, you should normally try to
find a suitable language version - this can be nontrivial, and my
experience suggests that the average lifetime of language-specific links
is about one year, as opposite to the two or three years for links in
general (e.g., language-specific links may require a query part, which
relies on specific server technology and arrangements on the external
server)
g) JavaScript - if your page has any JavaScript, then it probably has
translation issues, and this is something about which I _have_ written a
book (http://www.bytelevelbooks.com/books/global_javascript.html)
> For example, to take the trivial example of a Hello World page, I'd like
> to be able to develop the page in English, then make it multilingual so
> that the user selects his preferred language from a drop down list (or
> whatever) that then renders the exact same web page but displays the
> text in the user's language, such as "Bonjour le Monde!" or "Hallo
Welt!".
>
> Is that possible?
might even have built-in systems that let you send all the modified
texts, in XML format, automatically to your translation agency and have
the translated texts delivered automatically into your server. As you
may guess, such things tend to work _much_ better in theory than in
practice. And don't expect them to be cheap. And quality control will be
difficult to arrange: even if the translators are highly competent, what
guarantees that all the translations will work fine in the context that
the translators didn't really see when doing their job?
> I'd strongly prefer
> techniques that DON'T involve having to have separate copies of each
> page for each language since it is very hard to keep the pages in sync;
> once you start messing with one version of the page, it's a hassle to
> have to remember to modify the other language versions of the page so
> that they are exactly the same.
after any change, relying on Translation Memory (TM) to take care of
parts that haven't been changed. But there are pitfalls in this, and you
might still need to pay for the TM usage.
> I know that the single-page-for-every-language approach is likely to be
> impractical once I start getting into Right-to-left vs. Left-to-right
> languages but I'm hoping it could be made to work for European
> languages. Maybe I'm overoptimistic though.
versions? This would mean that you need to rely on JavaScript to show
the right language version. I wouldn't be worried about the data
transfer overhead these days, as a rule, but what do you think search
engines would see? A total mix of languages, perhaps.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Rhino
Dec 31, 2011, 4:02:45 PM12/31/11
to
"tlvp" <mPiOsUcB...@att.net> wrote in message
news:9v2z3xa0ad4.17y3xvvxh9yqy$.dlg@40tude.net...
suggestion. What do you mean by a "CSS event"? CSS doesn't care about
events, just the HTML in your document and what the corresponding CSS should
do with it. I'm not sure how to get started with this suggestion.
--
Rhino
Rhino
Dec 31, 2011, 4:10:04 PM12/31/11
to
"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkor...@cs.tut.fi> wrote in message
news:jdl70s$5v7$2...@dont-email.me...
multilingual pages yet. I had hoped that in the past few years some bright
people would have worked out clever ways to give us multilingual sites with
minimal effort. I was especially hoping that the need to have parallel pages
in each of the supported languages would be a thing of the past for all web
developers, not just those with lots of money to throw at the problem.
Apparently, I was over-optimistic about the progress that had been made :-)
I think I'll stick with more traditional methods - one version of each page
for each language - and experiment with knocking together a multilingual
Java applet to display the information I want to show.
Thanks for sharing your experience in this area.
--
Rhino
Jukka K. Korpela
Dec 31, 2011, 5:20:43 PM12/31/11
to
2011-12-31 23:02, Rhino wrote:
> "tlvp" <mPiOsUcB...@att.net> wrote
[...]
the idea was to use, say,
<div class=en>Hi!</div>
<div class=es>�Hola!</div>
and style sheets like
.en { display: none; }
vs.
.es { display: none; }
to select a language. This is possible, but you would still need to have
separate files, though the difference would minimally be on CSS rule or
maybe one URL in a <link rel=stylesheet ...> element.
Moreover, a search engine would see the page with all the mixed-language
texts. And content selection isn't really what CSS is suitable for.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
> "tlvp" <mPiOsUcB...@att.net> wrote
[...]
>> perhaps having each
>> language triggered by some sort of CSS event would let you put everything
>> you want to say, in all releant languages, into the page in separate
>> DIVs,
>> with a "class= " for each language, and CSS letting only the relevant
>> language get displayed.
[...]
>> language triggered by some sort of CSS event would let you put everything
>> you want to say, in all releant languages, into the page in separate
>> DIVs,
>> with a "class= " for each language, and CSS letting only the relevant
>> language get displayed.
> I appreciate your effort to help but I'm afraid I don't understand your
> suggestion. What do you mean by a "CSS event"? CSS doesn't care about
> events, just the HTML in your document and what the corresponding CSS
> should do with it.
CSS has some event-like features, like :hover and :active. But I suppose
> suggestion. What do you mean by a "CSS event"? CSS doesn't care about
> events, just the HTML in your document and what the corresponding CSS
> should do with it.
the idea was to use, say,
<div class=en>Hi!</div>
<div class=es>�Hola!</div>
and style sheets like
.en { display: none; }
vs.
.es { display: none; }
to select a language. This is possible, but you would still need to have
separate files, though the difference would minimally be on CSS rule or
maybe one URL in a <link rel=stylesheet ...> element.
Moreover, a search engine would see the page with all the mixed-language
texts. And content selection isn't really what CSS is suitable for.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Dr J R Stockton
Jan 1, 2012, 2:44:15 PM1/1/12
to
In comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html message <jdkha2$lqj$1...@speranza.ai
oe.org>, Fri, 30 Dec 2011 09:20:10, Rhino <no_offline_contact_please@exa
mple.com> posted:
>What are the best ways to do multilingual websites these days?
>
>I would dearly love to be able to develop a website in English and then
>make it multilingual without having to develop any new webpages at all,
>just provide the text on that page in the user's preferred language.
Easily done with a Google Translate button. The "foreign" won't be very
good, but should improve with time.
If you can read any foreign languages, you can adjust your English to
make it easier for Google to understand. For example, if you write in
English "wild-card" in the DOS filename sense, you might dislike "joker"
in the French, so paraphrase wild-card
Other than is such a fashion, you can only provide languages that you
know or for which you have a translator, and then the only decision is,
per English web page, you intersperse the foreign or send another page.
Do NOT auto-choose the language - nothing will annoy a reader more than
being forced to read an imperfect translation into what you think is his
preferred language when he can read English or American perfectly well.
With JavaScript, it should be sufficiently easy to provide a set of
language buttons, coded once in an include file, on each page, and to
modify each intra-site link in the DOM tree to point to your page in the
selected language.
>Rhino
If you were to give a proper personal name in your articles, one might
be able to use it to remember the state of your existing knowledge of
various relevant topics and respond accordingly. "Rhino" merely
suggests that you are obese, thick-skinned, and of inferior intellect.
--
(c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v6.05.
Website <http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - w. FAQish topics, links, acronyms
PAS EXE etc. : <http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/programs/> - see in 00index.htm
Dates - miscdate.htm estrdate.htm js-dates.htm pas-time.htm critdate.htm etc.
oe.org>, Fri, 30 Dec 2011 09:20:10, Rhino <no_offline_contact_please@exa
mple.com> posted:
>What are the best ways to do multilingual websites these days?
>
>I would dearly love to be able to develop a website in English and then
>make it multilingual without having to develop any new webpages at all,
>just provide the text on that page in the user's preferred language.
good, but should improve with time.
If you can read any foreign languages, you can adjust your English to
make it easier for Google to understand. For example, if you write in
English "wild-card" in the DOS filename sense, you might dislike "joker"
in the French, so paraphrase wild-card
Other than is such a fashion, you can only provide languages that you
know or for which you have a translator, and then the only decision is,
per English web page, you intersperse the foreign or send another page.
Do NOT auto-choose the language - nothing will annoy a reader more than
being forced to read an imperfect translation into what you think is his
preferred language when he can read English or American perfectly well.
With JavaScript, it should be sufficiently easy to provide a set of
language buttons, coded once in an include file, on each page, and to
modify each intra-site link in the DOM tree to point to your page in the
selected language.
>Rhino
If you were to give a proper personal name in your articles, one might
be able to use it to remember the state of your existing knowledge of
various relevant topics and respond accordingly. "Rhino" merely
suggests that you are obese, thick-skinned, and of inferior intellect.
--
(c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v6.05.
Website <http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - w. FAQish topics, links, acronyms
PAS EXE etc. : <http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/programs/> - see in 00index.htm
Dates - miscdate.htm estrdate.htm js-dates.htm pas-time.htm critdate.htm etc.
Message has been deleted
Jukka K. Korpela
Jan 1, 2012, 7:50:40 PM1/1/12
to
2012-01-01 21:44, Dr J R Stockton wrote:
>> I would dearly love to be able to develop a website in English and then
>> make it multilingual without having to develop any new webpages at all,
>> just provide the text on that page in the user's preferred language.
>
> Easily done with a Google Translate button. The "foreign" won't be very
> good, but should improve with time.
Let's take the simple example, a short sentence from the above: "I would
>> I would dearly love to be able to develop a website in English and then
>> make it multilingual without having to develop any new webpages at all,
>> just provide the text on that page in the user's preferred language.
>
> Easily done with a Google Translate button. The "foreign" won't be very
> good, but should improve with time.
dearly love to be able to develop a website in English". Google
translates this into Finnish as "Olisin kalliisti rakkautta pysty�
kehitt�m��n verkkosivuilla Englanti." That's probably all Greek to you,
but it roughly mean "I would be love for a high price to able to develop
on web pages England".
Or let's translate it into Korean, then back to English, using Google
Translate. We get "I keep, I could be developing a website in English".
> If you can read any foreign languages, you can adjust your English to
> make it easier for Google to understand.
if the user knows the target language to some extent (and can detect
obvious mistranslations) but does not write it well enough. It can also
be a practical solution to dynamically translating _generated texts_
when the texts are of very simple grammatical structure. My newest book
( http://bytelevelbooks.com/books/global_javascript.html ) has some
notes on this, and two of the online code samples illustrates the ideas
in a simple setting.
But as a way of generating normal content, automatic translation is
hardly good for your business. It will become feasible for some types of
content, such as product catalogs, provided that the original text is
simple and well controlled (texts should basically be written in an
environment that allows only a limited repertoire of grammatical
structures, tested to be "safe in translation").
> For example, if you write in
> English "wild-card" in the DOS filename sense, you might dislike "joker"
> in the French, so paraphrase wild-card
terms. Google Translate translates "wild-card" into French as
"wild-card". And although it makes a reasonable translation of "a symbol
that stands for one or more unspecified characters", it's not really
something you want to use when you need the concept more than once.
ObHTML: There's remarkably little in HTML to assist machine translation,
but Google Website Translator makes use of lang attributes. The
_possibility_ of machine translation, possibly invoked by visitors of
your pages using their favorite software, is a good reason to use the
lang attribute for a page as a whole as well as for any longish (say, a
sentence of more) passage in a language other than the main language of
the page. An automatic translator may be capable of deducing the
language from the content itself, and this mostly works reasonably, but
_changes_ in language could cause problems, so e.g. a foreign-language
quotation is worth being marked up with a lang attribute.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
tlvp
Jan 1, 2012, 11:14:44 PM1/1/12
to
On Mon, 02 Jan 2012 02:50:40 +0200, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> 2012-01-01 21:44, Dr J R Stockton wrote:
>
>>> I would dearly love to be able to develop a website in English and then
>>> make it multilingual without having to develop any new webpages at all,
>>> just provide the text on that page in the user's preferred language.
>>
>> Easily done with a Google Translate button. The "foreign" won't be very
>> good, but should improve with time.
>
> Let's take the simple example, a short sentence from the above: "I would
> dearly love to be able to develop a website in English". Google
> translates this into Finnish as "Olisin kalliisti rakkautta pystyä
> 2012-01-01 21:44, Dr J R Stockton wrote:
>
>>> I would dearly love to be able to develop a website in English and then
>>> make it multilingual without having to develop any new webpages at all,
>>> just provide the text on that page in the user's preferred language.
>>
>> Easily done with a Google Translate button. The "foreign" won't be very
>> good, but should improve with time.
>
> Let's take the simple example, a short sentence from the above: "I would
> dearly love to be able to develop a website in English". Google
> kehittämään verkkosivuilla Englanti." That's probably all Greek to you,
> but it roughly mean "I would be love for a high price to able to develop
> on web pages England".
>
> Or let's translate it into Korean, then back to English, using Google
> Translate. We get "I keep, I could be developing a website in English".
One each of my favorite one-ways and round-trips from earlier vintages of
> on web pages England".
>
> Or let's translate it into Korean, then back to English, using Google
> Translate. We get "I keep, I could be developing a website in English".
translation software (BabbleFish, et al.):
DE: bald geht es los => EN-US: hairless goes it loose.
EN-US: out of sight, out of mind => CN => EN-US: blind and crazy.
Just for fun, of course :-) . Cheers, -- tlvp
Andreas Prilop
Jan 2, 2012, 12:41:36 PM1/2/12
to
On Mon, 2 Jan 2012, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> Google Website Translator makes use of lang attributes.
<span lang="de"> links </span>
> Google Website Translator makes use of lang attributes.
is translated into French as “liens”, not as “gauche”.
tlvp
Jan 2, 2012, 1:59:10 PM1/2/12
to
Dr J R Stockton
Jan 3, 2012, 3:03:11 PM1/3/12
to
In comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html message <jdqv10$272$1@dont-
email.me>, Mon, 2 Jan 2012 02:50:40, Jukka K. Korpela
<jkor...@cs.tut.fi> posted:
>> For example, if you write in
>> English "wild-card" in the DOS filename sense, you might dislike "joker"
>> in the French, so paraphrase wild-card
>
>Paraphrases may get lost in translation more seriously than technical
>terms. Google Translate translates "wild-card" into French as "wild-
>card".
It does now. It did not do so on Sunday. Google learns.
You miss the point. In general, a Google Translate is good enough for a
monoglot reader to tell whether the site is of interest, and perhaps to
obtain a general rough understanding. That is better than nothing, and
is helpful faute de mieux, or for sites with simple text.
My home page has such a button, and my site can therefore be read in,
for example, something vaguely resembling Finnish. And Finnish better
than I could write, since little useful can be said in the only three
Finnish words that I can recall at present (one is perhaps only a
product name, and one is now disused - Kiitos, Eskimo, Markaa), and I've
forgotten the once most important word..
Its idea of the Finnish for Kepler's Laws translates back to something
at least recognisable; it's idea of the French seems good, and
translates back with a small error (foyer -> home, should be -> focus).
I've looked at some of my manual translation of Lagrange's "Essai" to
English as then translated to French by Google. Lagrange would have
recognised and understood the doubly-translated work; though he would
surely have criticised its grammar.
And, of course, unless one has a full team of translators at one's
elbow, only machine translation can track changes in near-real-time.
email.me>, Mon, 2 Jan 2012 02:50:40, Jukka K. Korpela
<jkor...@cs.tut.fi> posted:
>> For example, if you write in
>> English "wild-card" in the DOS filename sense, you might dislike "joker"
>> in the French, so paraphrase wild-card
>
>Paraphrases may get lost in translation more seriously than technical
>terms. Google Translate translates "wild-card" into French as "wild-
>card".
You miss the point. In general, a Google Translate is good enough for a
monoglot reader to tell whether the site is of interest, and perhaps to
obtain a general rough understanding. That is better than nothing, and
is helpful faute de mieux, or for sites with simple text.
My home page has such a button, and my site can therefore be read in,
for example, something vaguely resembling Finnish. And Finnish better
than I could write, since little useful can be said in the only three
Finnish words that I can recall at present (one is perhaps only a
product name, and one is now disused - Kiitos, Eskimo, Markaa), and I've
forgotten the once most important word..
Its idea of the Finnish for Kepler's Laws translates back to something
at least recognisable; it's idea of the French seems good, and
translates back with a small error (foyer -> home, should be -> focus).
I've looked at some of my manual translation of Lagrange's "Essai" to
English as then translated to French by Google. Lagrange would have
recognised and understood the doubly-translated work; though he would
surely have criticised its grammar.
And, of course, unless one has a full team of translators at one's
elbow, only machine translation can track changes in near-real-time.
Andreas Prilop
Jan 4, 2012, 1:14:33 PM1/4/12
to
On Tue, 3 Jan 2012, Dr J R Stockton wrote:
> Jukka K. Korpela posted:
http://translate.google.co.uk/?sl=en&tl=fr&q=wild-card
http://translate.google.co.uk/?sl=en&tl=fr&q=wild%20card
If you don’t want a term to be translated, write
<span class="notranslate"> wild card </span>
--
In memoriam Alan J. Flavell
http://groups.google.com/groups/search?q=author:Alan.J.Flavell
> Jukka K. Korpela posted:
>
>> Paraphrases may get lost in translation more seriously than
>> technical terms. Google Translate translates "wild-card" into
>> French as "wild-card".
>> Paraphrases may get lost in translation more seriously than
>> technical terms. Google Translate translates "wild-card" into
>
> It does now. It did not do so on Sunday. Google learns.
“wild-card” and “wild card” are different:
> It does now. It did not do so on Sunday. Google learns.
http://translate.google.co.uk/?sl=en&tl=fr&q=wild-card
http://translate.google.co.uk/?sl=en&tl=fr&q=wild%20card
If you don’t want a term to be translated, write
<span class="notranslate"> wild card </span>
--
In memoriam Alan J. Flavell
http://groups.google.com/groups/search?q=author:Alan.J.Flavell
Jukka K. Korpela
Jan 4, 2012, 5:59:31 PM1/4/12
to
2012-01-03 22:03, Dr J R Stockton wrote:
> In general, a Google Translate is good enough for a
> monoglot reader to tell whether the site is of interest, and perhaps to
> obtain a general rough understanding.
Perhaps, but what is the added value of a site-specific translation
> In general, a Google Translate is good enough for a
> monoglot reader to tell whether the site is of interest, and perhaps to
> obtain a general rough understanding.
widget? A person who does not understand the language of your page will
seldom stumble across it. If he finds it with a search engine because he
used suitable proper names or international words, then the odds are
that Google suggested a translation possibility to him. How will the
poor user know whether the translation widget on the page is something
better? Besides, by leaving it to translation systems to advertise
themselves, your site won't get the moral responsibility for whatever
absurd and wrong translations might be generated.
As I previously wrote, in special cases, for well understood purposes,
translation widgets can have real added value. As a paradigmatic (i.e.,
imitated) "standard" feature of pages, they are comparable to ideas of
having interfaces to search engines as part of a normal web site or to
"print this page" or "bookmark this page widget".
> That is better than nothing,
they look good. This is part of the problem with Google Translate: it
uses heuristics and statistical methods and often processes a longish
phrase as a unit, often resulting in syntactically good-looking text.
But it may get the content completely wrong; I've seen it translate a
word for Monday to "Sunday" (probably due to errors in its analysis of
texts).
> My home page has such a button, and my site can therefore be read in,
> for example, something vaguely resembling Finnish.
chances of understanding the contents of your pages and who understands
the "Finnish" generated by Google Translate better than your English
text. Elder people (over 50 or 60) may have read German or Latin as
first foreign language and may have lacked the opportunity to learn
English at school or later, but I don't think many of them would be
interested in MS-DOS Batch files or JavaScript programming. Even if
there were such a person, why would he understand the word "Translate"
or the words "Select Language"?
> Its idea of the Finnish for Kepler's Laws translates back to something
> at least recognisable;
especially in the positive direction, since translation in one direction
probably shares quite a lot of logic, code, and vocabulary with the
opposite translation.
The translation, once got to it after using the translation widget on
your main page (which seemed to make it impossible to follow links
without opening them in a new window or new tab), is total nonsense. A
majority of the words are sensible translations of the English words,
but the sentences just don't make sense - only the very first words "the
orbits are ellipses" have been translated intelligibly.
To be honest, the Swedish translation is rather understandable, with
just a few grammar errors and with some obscurity caused by pronouns (so
typical of machine translation: how could the software know what "its"
refers to?).
> And, of course, unless one has a full team of translators at one's
> elbow, only machine translation can track changes in near-real-time.
and maintenance of a hundred different language versions. Rather,
leaving possible translation outside the scope of the site - users can
use it if they like, using a translator of their choice. You may help
this somewhat by keeping the language as simple as possible (but not
simpler), using spelling checkers (spelling errors unnoticeable to human
readers may thoroughly upset machine translation), etc. - and by
following the rule that as far as feasible, the text content of each
HTML element, such as link text, should constitute a separately
understandable and translatable expression.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Dr J R Stockton
Jan 5, 2012, 2:59:27 PM1/5/12
to
In comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html message <je2lkh$l1u$1@dont-
email.me>, Thu, 5 Jan 2012 00:59:31, Jukka K. Korpela
<jkor...@cs.tut.fi> posted:
>2012-01-03 22:03, Dr J R Stockton wrote:
>
>> In general, a Google Translate is good enough for a
>> monoglot reader to tell whether the site is of interest, and perhaps to
>> obtain a general rough understanding.
>
>Perhaps, but what is the added value of a site-specific translation
>widget? A person who does not understand the language of your page will
>seldom stumble across it.
He may be directed to it by a link from a page which he can read.
>> My home page has such a button, and my site can therefore be read in,
>> for example, something vaguely resembling Finnish.
>
>I would be rather surprised to find a Finn who has interest in and
>chances of understanding the contents of your pages and who understands
>the "Finnish" generated by Google Translate better than your English
>text.
No doubt true. A friend of mine moved to Finland about 40 years ago
expressly to educate the Finns in English. I know of one Finn who has
been interested in the sort of things I write; but his ability to read
English is at least as good as yours.
> Elder people (over 50 or 60) may have read German or Latin as first
>foreign language and may have lacked the opportunity to learn English
>at school or later, but I don't think many of them would be interested
>in MS-DOS Batch files or JavaScript programming.
My site does have other topics.
> Even if there were such a person, why would he understand the word
>"Translate" or the words "Select Language"?
Does Google show those in English to a thoroughly non-English-speaking
computer? It certainly should translate them, but possibly they have
not yet thought of that; they are, after all, in California. Actually,
the "Translate" that I see is hard to machine translate, being in an
image. The purpose of the drop-down is sufficiently obvious once it has
been dropped.
>> Its idea of the Finnish for Kepler's Laws translates back to something
>> at least recognisable;
>
>Back-translation using the same automatic translator proves very little
>especially in the positive direction, since translation in one
>direction probably shares quite a lot of logic, code, and vocabulary
>with the opposite translation.
But if the back-translation is unrecognisable, for that very reason it
casts considerable doubt on the forward translation.
> (spelling errors unnoticeable to human readers may thoroughly upset
>machine translation),
In fact, translating from a language that one can write to another that
one can more-or-less read can easily find instances of typoes (not found
by spelling-checkers) that scarcely change the appearance of a source
word but substantially change the translation.
I find t <-> r an easy typo to make and hard to see. Google Translate
should be fairly reliable on such words as "cat" and "car", and so far
I've only discovered two languages in which Google's translations are
not visually very different - Welsh and Latin - and the Latin is
certainly wrong.
By the way,
<http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zellerin_s%C3%A4%C3%A4nt%C3%B6> is
clearly in need of correction. I have a policy of not changing non-
English Wikipedia pages - but its empty Keskustelu is tempting.
--
(c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web <http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
Proper <= 4-line sig. separator as above, a line exactly "-- " (SonOfRFC1036)
Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with ">" or "> " (SonOfRFC1036)
email.me>, Thu, 5 Jan 2012 00:59:31, Jukka K. Korpela
<jkor...@cs.tut.fi> posted:
>2012-01-03 22:03, Dr J R Stockton wrote:
>
>> In general, a Google Translate is good enough for a
>> monoglot reader to tell whether the site is of interest, and perhaps to
>> obtain a general rough understanding.
>
>Perhaps, but what is the added value of a site-specific translation
>widget? A person who does not understand the language of your page will
>seldom stumble across it.
>> My home page has such a button, and my site can therefore be read in,
>> for example, something vaguely resembling Finnish.
>
>I would be rather surprised to find a Finn who has interest in and
>chances of understanding the contents of your pages and who understands
>the "Finnish" generated by Google Translate better than your English
>text.
expressly to educate the Finns in English. I know of one Finn who has
been interested in the sort of things I write; but his ability to read
English is at least as good as yours.
> Elder people (over 50 or 60) may have read German or Latin as first
>foreign language and may have lacked the opportunity to learn English
>at school or later, but I don't think many of them would be interested
>in MS-DOS Batch files or JavaScript programming.
> Even if there were such a person, why would he understand the word
>"Translate" or the words "Select Language"?
computer? It certainly should translate them, but possibly they have
not yet thought of that; they are, after all, in California. Actually,
the "Translate" that I see is hard to machine translate, being in an
image. The purpose of the drop-down is sufficiently obvious once it has
been dropped.
>> Its idea of the Finnish for Kepler's Laws translates back to something
>> at least recognisable;
>
>Back-translation using the same automatic translator proves very little
>especially in the positive direction, since translation in one
>direction probably shares quite a lot of logic, code, and vocabulary
>with the opposite translation.
casts considerable doubt on the forward translation.
> (spelling errors unnoticeable to human readers may thoroughly upset
>machine translation),
one can more-or-less read can easily find instances of typoes (not found
by spelling-checkers) that scarcely change the appearance of a source
word but substantially change the translation.
I find t <-> r an easy typo to make and hard to see. Google Translate
should be fairly reliable on such words as "cat" and "car", and so far
I've only discovered two languages in which Google's translations are
not visually very different - Welsh and Latin - and the Latin is
certainly wrong.
By the way,
<http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zellerin_s%C3%A4%C3%A4nt%C3%B6> is
clearly in need of correction. I have a policy of not changing non-
English Wikipedia pages - but its empty Keskustelu is tempting.
--
(c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web <http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
Proper <= 4-line sig. separator as above, a line exactly "-- " (SonOfRFC1036)
Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with ">" or "> " (SonOfRFC1036)
Jukka K. Korpela
Jan 6, 2012, 5:44:10 PM1/6/12
to
2012-01-05 21:59, Dr J R Stockton wrote:
>> Even if there were such a person, why would he understand the word
>> "Translate" or the words "Select Language"?
>
> Does Google show those in English to a thoroughly non-English-speaking
> computer?
Yes. But in my simple
>> Even if there were such a person, why would he understand the word
>> "Translate" or the words "Select Language"?
>
> Does Google show those in English to a thoroughly non-English-speaking
> computer?
test http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/test/translate.html8
which uses the simple method described at
http://translate.google.com/translate_tools
the user interface of the translator widget is in the language that
appears first in the language preferences of the browser. This is at
least theoretically the right way to select language - the language of
the operating system, its language settings, and the language of the
browser should be immaterial.
But for some odd reason, that does not happen on my Firefox
(English-language version): it always uses English. I don't understand
this. I even checked that the headers passed to translate.google.com contain
Accept-Language=fi,sv;q=0.7,de;q=0.3
(I even removed English completely for the purposes of testing). On
other browsers, the language with highest preference in settings
controls the language of the widget.
It's not just the word "Translate". It's also the list of language names
and other parts of the User Interface. (Let's blame Google for not
localizing the string "Original Text:" there; but the text "Show
alternative translations" has been localized.)
> The purpose of the drop-down is sufficiently obvious once it has
> been dropped.
the name of your preferred language in English.
> In fact, translating from a language that one can write to another that
> one can more-or-less read can easily find instances of typoes (not found
> by spelling-checkers) that scarcely change the appearance of a source
> word but substantially change the translation.
translation useful - as in my scenario of user input that can be
translated, using a page-specific widget, into a certain language
(typically English) that the user can read well enough to spot many
apparent mistakes. It's not just a matter of fixing typos; it's also a
matter of selecting simpler grammatical structures to get a better
translation.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Dr J R Stockton
Jan 7, 2012, 2:53:06 PM1/7/12
to
In comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html message <je7tfn$h0g$1@dont-
email.me>, Sat, 7 Jan 2012 00:44:10, Jukka K. Korpela
<jkor...@cs.tut.fi> posted:
>It's not just the word "Translate". It's also the list of language
>names and other parts of the User Interface. (Let's blame Google for
>not localizing the string "Original Text:" there; but the text "Show
>alternative translations" has been localized.)
>
>> The purpose of the drop-down is sufficiently obvious once it has
>> been dropped.
>
>Perhaps, if you can see that it is a list of language names and you
>know the name of your preferred language in English.
In my browsers, English is the only language given in English. There is
also 'Indonesia', in English, but that is the country - the language (in
English) is 'Indonesian', according to Wikipedia; but is "Bahasa
Indonesia" in the chief local language. As far as I can see, which is
about half-way, all other languages are named in themselves.
>> In fact, translating from a language that one can write to another that
>> one can more-or-less read can easily find instances of typoes (not found
>> by spelling-checkers) that scarcely change the appearance of a source
>> word but substantially change the translation.
>
>Yes, that's an important practical point that makes interactive
>translation useful - as in my scenario of user input that can be
>translated, using a page-specific widget, into a certain language
>(typically English) that the user can read well enough to spot many
>apparent mistakes. It's not just a matter of fixing typos; it's also a
>matter of selecting simpler grammatical structures to get a better
>translation.
For the above I looked at my home page in "Indonesia" translation - and
spotted two errors in the original English. Admittedly they were
perfectly visible in the original, had I looked.
email.me>, Sat, 7 Jan 2012 00:44:10, Jukka K. Korpela
<jkor...@cs.tut.fi> posted:
>It's not just the word "Translate". It's also the list of language
>names and other parts of the User Interface. (Let's blame Google for
>not localizing the string "Original Text:" there; but the text "Show
>alternative translations" has been localized.)
>
>> The purpose of the drop-down is sufficiently obvious once it has
>> been dropped.
>
>Perhaps, if you can see that it is a list of language names and you
>know the name of your preferred language in English.
also 'Indonesia', in English, but that is the country - the language (in
English) is 'Indonesian', according to Wikipedia; but is "Bahasa
Indonesia" in the chief local language. As far as I can see, which is
about half-way, all other languages are named in themselves.
>> In fact, translating from a language that one can write to another that
>> one can more-or-less read can easily find instances of typoes (not found
>> by spelling-checkers) that scarcely change the appearance of a source
>> word but substantially change the translation.
>
>Yes, that's an important practical point that makes interactive
>translation useful - as in my scenario of user input that can be
>translated, using a page-specific widget, into a certain language
>(typically English) that the user can read well enough to spot many
>apparent mistakes. It's not just a matter of fixing typos; it's also a
>matter of selecting simpler grammatical structures to get a better
>translation.
spotted two errors in the original English. Admittedly they were
perfectly visible in the original, had I looked.
Jukka K. Korpela
Jan 7, 2012, 7:10:41 PM1/7/12
to
2012-01-07 21:53, Dr J R Stockton wrote:
>> Perhaps, if you can see that it is a list of language names and you
>> know the name of your preferred language in English.
>
> In my browsers, English is the only language given in English.
Sorry, I forgot that oddity in the Google gadget you're using.
>> Perhaps, if you can see that it is a list of language names and you
>> know the name of your preferred language in English.
>
> In my browsers, English is the only language given in English.
> As far as I can see, which is
> about half-way, all other languages are named in themselves.
mostly at random, not according to the rules of each language. The main
oddity is that the languages are in a confusing order. You _cannot_ have
any intuitively reasonable order when you mix different writing systems.
The order looks partly alphabetic, just enough to confuse.
The order there is by language code, which is not visible to the user.
However, English appears first (and it's not a dummy option, you can
actually try it...).
There's no good way to set up a menu for selecting a language when you
do not know which language(s) the user prefers for such a selection. But
this setup doesn't come even close.
Using the language from the preference settings in the browser cannot be
horribly wrong. It's often not the language that the user prefers most,
as it typically comes from the browser defaults, which normally contain
just the language of the browser itself. But this means that the
language must be known to the user at least to the extent that he can
use a browser with menus etc. in that language.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Andreas Prilop
Jan 18, 2012, 10:53:31 AM1/18/12
to
On Sat, 7 Jan 2012, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/test/translate.html8
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/test/translate.html8
> the user interface of the translator widget is in the language
> that appears first in the language preferences of the browser.
> that appears first in the language preferences of the browser.
> But for some odd reason, that does not happen on my Firefox
Delete cookies.
Jukka K. Korpela
Jan 20, 2012, 2:19:18 AM1/20/12
to
http://translate.google.com/ I see it in English (and I also checked
this while logged in to my Google+ account where I have Finnish set as
the language).
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
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