Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 2:54 PM
(This has been cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)How long would it take to translate all the world's web content into 50 languages? Even if all of the translators in the world worked around the clock, with the current growth rate of content being created online and the sheer amount of data on the web, it would take hundreds of years to make even a small dent.
Today, we're happy to announce a new website translator gadget powered by Google Translate that enables you to make your site's content available in 51 languages. Now, when people visit your page, if their language (as determined by their browser settings) is different than the language of your page, they'll be prompted to automatically translate the page into their own language. If the visitor's language is the same as the language of your page, no translation banner will appear.
After clicking the Translate button, the automatic translations are shown directly on your page.
It's easy to install — all you have to do is cut and paste a short snippet into your webpage to increase the global reach of your blog or website.
Automatic translation is convenient and helps people get a quick gist of the page. However, it's not a perfect substitute for the art of professional translation. Today happens to be International Translation Day, and we'd like to take the opportunity to celebrate the contributions of translators all over the world. These translators play an essential role in enabling global communication, and with the rapid growth and ease of access to digital content, the need for them is greater than ever. We hope that professional translators, along with translation tools such as Google Translator Toolkit and this Translate gadget, will continue to help make the world's content more accessible to everyone.
42 comments:
will Google index our web translated?
My question is same as Lorenzo Solis ?? Are our translated paged going to be indexed ??
"Translate your website with Google: EXPAND your audience globally".
(un)fortunately "expand" doesn't mean "reach" your audience. There is a HUGE difference between translate (something that Google does pretty well to be an automated tool) and localize which is something you should do in order to penetrate a market...
Does this website translator will interfere AdSense in delivering contextual ads to our sites?
I'd love to see this built into Google Sites.
copyscape index all the translated language and google even :)
How does tihs work in regards Wordpress ?
Can this be implemented into a WP installatiojn ?
I have several blogs on WordPress. Is there any Plugin for WordPress for installing it?
I noted that all who comments have questions. How will they receive answers?
Not working at my site, I get an error everytime. Error: The server could not complete your request. Try again later.
Adding to my sites, works excelent except in one, which uses embedded Google Maps and when showing translation (my site shows framed in a Google domain) asks for a different API key for GMaps.
take a look, this is a random page with railroad stations: http://www.masmapas.com/maps_search?filter0=estaciones+ffcc+linea+mitre
Sorry, It's me again. I guess this is not the right place to post this. Is there any official suport forum for G translate?
Cheers!
Gustavo
Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought _nothing_ would appear on my site unless the visitor had a different language setting, in their browser, than what the site is originally.
My site is written in English, and, after inserting this code and visiting my site with my browser (Safari) left at default (English), I see the language selector drop-down.
Am I right in thinking _nothing_ should appear on my website in my case? I was hoping the language selection would only appear when a visitor, who spoke another language and had those settings appropriately selected in their web browser, came to my website.
+1 same in spanish
Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought _nothing_ would appear on my site unless the visitor had a different language setting, in their browser, than what the site is originally.
My site is written in English, and, after inserting this code and visiting my site with my browser (Safari) left at default (English), I see the language selector drop-down.
I thought the same thing.
I don't like the execution of this either. It's like I have a huge ad for Google on my site, and while I love Google, I don't want to confuse my customers. Something more discreet would be better, and a better UI experience for my customers.
amaha2001Dear Google Office,
Sub:-Google needs in globle.
Today i saw news paper. i read one comments of google. google good in the world. How to become good the world from google.
I can suggest u. The matter are given below-
1. In the google site many things are good for world. If u can add the sensex of all world and shown it. the google can increase the inportants.
2.If u can remove sex site like as mom sex,aunty sex and other sex from the google site , so u can increase your social importance for the world.
3.If u can add the All success person full life History & interview from the world (how can sucess). That is grate thing of the world, if u add the thats u can something for the world through the google site.
4.If u can start e-class with fee for the all class in the world , u can something do the good for world people.
5.If u can add the all popolution in your site, country wise,population details. u can increase your glogley importance, and u can something do good for all govt sector and world.
6.If u can add the e-library for all books . u increase your inprtance.
Kindly forword the google office.
Thanks
Awanindra
Is there a way for us as the owner of the page to see what languages people have translated our content into? It would be great to know what languages were popular
Very cool tool!
Some thoughts of mine, after playing with it a bit:
1) This is a Javascript/client-based tool, meaning that it operates within the visitor's browser. I highly doubt it would affect a site's SEO or ranking, or get indexed, or alter AdSense context detection. Since it's JS-based, I would bet that it would work with WordPress just fine.
2) I thought the Translate Gadget code was to be placed in the HTML 'head' section of the page. I was wrong. It goes in the 'body' section.
3) Where the code snippet is placed in the HTML page is where the "Select Language / Powered by Google Translate" selection box appears. This seems to be able to be placed anywhere on the webpage, including the bottom or other out-of-the-way place.
4) The Google Translate bar across the top of the webpage appears only when either of the following happens (otherwise it's absent): the user selects the translation language from the selection box -- or the bar appears automatically if the user's browser is a different language than your page (they don't need to select from the selection box).
Recommendations for Google -- Before I make this gadget live on my site, I'd prefer to wait until some of the following features get added:
1) More control over the appearance of the language selection box (no, not the translate bar at the top -- that's fine). I'd like to be able to make the selection box and Google logo smaller, or perhaps lengthwise, or tighter vertically, or other tweaks...
2) The list of languages in the selection box might be more useful if they were in their native languages.
Thanks!
Unfortunately all automatic translation without being duly edited and revised is bad. I am sad Google is announcing this as great news. What people should do would be looking for a person to at least edit the text. How are you going to trust if your site was correctly translated into a language you don't understand? That's not smart.
Celina, it's not always a bad thing. Sure, manually translated websites are probably going to be much clearer than automated ones, but there are substantial advantages to using Google's (or other companies') automated translation services:
1) Google has a fantastic reputation, so while it probably can't make picture perfect translations, many people trust Google to do its best, given it's (mostly) just a machine.
2) There are websites that aren't simply made of up static articles -- the content of the site is ever-changing, based on various factors, such as user-submitted content, news, data feeds, etc. You can't permanently translate such websites and need on-the-fly translation instead.
3) Google's automated translation seems to handle 50+ languages. Translating a website into that many languages manually can be exceedingly complicated and expensive.
- GlobalConv.com
I believe this is one of the best services that Google had ever launched ... Thanks Google Team :)
Hi folks,
Thanks for your interest! The Translate team has put together a website translator FAQ which should answer some of your questions. For any still-unanswered questions, please post in their forum.
Knowing that the mobile is tomorrow's media, why isnt this tool mobile compatible ?
I know some mobiles understand javascript but 90% of them still don't.
Its not working on my site...can we paste the code anywhere inside the body tag??
Took code down, does not work!
"Now, when people visit your page, if their language (as determined by their browser settings) is different than the language of your page, they'll be prompted to automatically translate the page into their own language. If the visitor's language is the same as the language of your page, no translation banner will appear." NOT WORKING FOR MY SITE IT ALWAYS APPEARS
Mark: The appearance of the translation bar happens when the browser's language is different from the language that you specified in the HTML code snippet. It may appear for you but be hidden for someone else visiting your site.
Also, the appearance of the language selection box (which is much smaller than the translation bar) will always be there -- wherever you place the HTML code.
- GlobalConv.com
Introdução
Esta é uma página da Web exemplo. Você pode visualizar e testar o tradutor do Web site aqui. Tente alterar as configurações acima e clique em "Preview" e tente! " botão para ver o efeito. Por exemplo, se você selecionar idiomas específicos de tradução, as línguas no menu de opções irá mudar. Apreciar!
This is the translation of the example for you to test the translator into Portuguese. You cannot notice, but there are some basic errors in this text (last sentence the verb should be plural, agreeing with "as línguas" (the languages, a plural word). But the verb is "irá" (singular). The "Apreciar!" would never be used in Portuguese in this context, although it might have been correct in other contexts. If you say "Enjoy" in English you would say in Portuguese, maybe "faça bom proveito". The very first sentence is wrong: the right thing would be "Este é um exemplo de tradução de Página da Web". Continuo dizendo que é muito arriscado usar um tradutor automático para traduzir em uma língua que a pessoa não sabe; ela nem vai entender o que está escrito no texto que obtiver, se está correto ou não. Há necessidade de um serviço de revisão, no mínimo. Um conselho que estou lhes dando. Eu nunca porei isso na minha página.
1. Google has a reputation that might be hurt by bad translations done by their machine. You are saying that we should believe in a person or company because it built a reputation. Not always and certainly not in this case.
2. If the sites change, it needs a translation every time. And there are translators for this service, and people that can revise the texts. Translations always take some time to be done because they cannot be done in just a second. There is always going to be a delay, and if you want a good text you need to accept this.
3. I'm not saying that you are going to get translators to translaste into 50 languages, and also I don't see a need to do that. Better have just half a dozen languages than 50 bad translations. Try to translate any site in Portuguese into English and see what happens. When you are dealing with even more complicated structures for instance, German, or maybe Asian languages, it might get even worse. I insist that to offer this kind of service Google would have to at least use some proofreaders (human) to check the texts before they are released to the site. Or you believe that a machine can totally replace the human beings? Not in translation, that is for sure. An automatic translation can be a tool to be used by a translator, not a replacement.
These seems like a great tool. Is there someplace easy to find out more info about. Will translate text on forms. My site http://www.quotematcher.com has a lot of input forms on it for people to compare quotes for services they are looking for. If this will translate into many different languages this could be huge for us.
I do like this service but the file translateelement.css contains invalid css. It would be nice if Google could deliver a valid css file.
I was thinking this would only appear when translation was necessary? I added code to footer and it added a dropdown bar in the middle of the site? I have removed the code
is there some way to get rid of the translation box? I just want the bar to pop-up if your language is different. Thanks!
Originally google translate would automatically translate from another language to English. Now it does not work. What can I do?
"Error: The server could not complete your request. Try again later."
Does the tool "google translator in the domain" on the Polish (iso) will display the languages that are to choose the language in which browser is set or only in Polish?
If only one is whether there is a way to replace Polish into English (so as to translate well into English)?
Better to use ISO, WINDOWS or UTF to the google translator?
Czy narzędzie "tłumacz google w domenie" na stronie polskiej (iso) będzie wyświetlał języki, które są do wyboru w języku w jakim jest ustawiona przeglądarka czy tylko w polskim? Jeżeli tylko w jednym to czy jest sposób żeby zamienić polski na angielski (tak żeby tłumaczył rownież na angielski)? Lepiej używać ISO, WINDOWS czy UTF na stronie z tłumaczem google?
I would also always get the message
"Error: The server could not complete your request. Try again later."
I finally discovered it was my Firefox add-on Flashblock. The problem doesn't happen using other browsers!
See http://code.google.com/p/bubble-translate/issues/detail?id=49#c5 for further explanation.
your article about language translation is very nice. some other site about language translations are also available like http://www.translation.pk/
Good luck with looking bad before the whole world with ridiculous translations of your pages, all. I don't even want to think of what my blog would look like in badly written Chinese. This is the worst of the bad ideas. I'm so not with Google in this. They say it's not a perfect translation. It's much more (or less) than that. Automatic translations are distortions of the original text. They should be forbidden by the copyright law. Translating something which is not what the author meant at all (and this is very easy to happen with automatic translation) apart from all the words that don't get translated or are "translated" with a totally different meaning, is in fact twisting what the author said and could also be interpreted as a bad kind of plagiarism. Google might get in trouble for this some day. I would start looking for professional editors to check your translations before they are actually published, in each language. No kidding, I use the Google system with my TRADOS when I translate and the most ridiculous things come up, like translating the English verb "can" as "lata" in Portuguese, which the the noun "can". No kidding! Seriously! Get real, Google.
Celina Cook, professional translator.
Celina, realize that there are situations where a professional translation is impractical -- and a rough translation will do OK. For example, imagine you run an online discussion forum where THOUSANDS of new message are posted by users each day. Can you imagine the daunting task, and cost, of hiring someone -- or a team of people -- to translate each of those new messages -- into dozens of languages nonetheless ? It's mind-boggling, really. And as that webmaster, you may realize that there are people all around the world who don't speak/read any English, but would find the content on your forums very useful. But, alas, they don't read English but would be quite happy to read a broken automated translation, if it was available, since it would be better than nothing. And maybe they don't know about any of the automated translation tools that they could install into their browser -- but if you offered the automated Google Translation gadget embedded on your website, they could opt to use it and read these messages posted by their fellow users, added to your forum every minute of every day. (Mind you, most of the message posted would be in quick, vernacular English -- certainly not well crafted, well thought out language with long-term intent that would be better served by professional translation.)
I have no doubt that automated translation technology will NEVER replace good ol' human translations, but I think Google's offering a great service by making it easy for webmasters to offer quick n' dirty translations, which can help visitors in many situations, as I illustrated above.
How can I get the translate button to cover every page of my website? Right now it is only showing on the index page. Do you I need to add it to every single page?
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