Foreign Language Translation (Full Version)

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Godsgirl -> Foreign Language Translation (3/27/2007 4:09:37)

Hello,
I have a question. We have a ministry called Healing Communities that is working extensively in several Euopean countries. I want to make the site more accessible to other languages. I have 2 choices. I can either have mirror sites by individually translating all of the original site into every language we work in, or I can put a link on the site so people can choose what language they want to view the site in.

I have tried to use Alta Vista's Babelfish, but I am not having much success. Babelfish generates a code to put in my HTML, but the code does not work and there are no instructions or help that I can find. So, can you help me with this? I would be happy if someone would help me make Bablefish work, but If there is a software or other subscription service that would be better, we will consider that too.

Any suggestions, comments etc are welcome.


Blessings,
Jeanne
============
www.healingcommunities.org



Tailslide -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/27/2007 4:20:08)

This is my personal view and others may well disagree with me on this.

I'd say that if you want a translation of your site then you need to get a Human to do the translating for you. Often the online translator's version of what you've typed in is, to say the least, inaccurate. Nuances of context are lost and the site may look less professional.

I'd suggest getting someone who actually speaks the language concerned to look at the translation you're getting to see if it's in any way accurate before you decide to rely on it.



Godsgirl -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/27/2007 4:38:18)

Thanks for your reply. We know this is true, BUT we would need 12 different laguanges

We personally have the human ability to translate the page into German, Spanish, French, Portugese, Serbian, Hebrew & Greek, but that does not help us with people who speak other languages and would mean the website would be unreasonably large.
I personally don't want to pay Tom for the bandwidth!!!

Other thoughts?



jaybee -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/27/2007 4:50:56)

Well yesterday I came across a recommendation for a Firefox extension called Fox Lingo. I have no idea how good it is but people were raving about it. You'll need the Firefox browser first though.

quote:

I have 2 choices. I can either have mirror sites by individually translating all of the original site into every language we work in, or I can put a link on the site so people can choose what language they want to view the site in.
3 choices, set the site up as dynamic so it reads the content from a database. You can then have alternate language files and just serve up the relevant bits depending on which the user chooses. You can use a cookie to keep track of the choice.



Godsgirl -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/27/2007 9:54:43)

Thanks Jaybee,
I have a question about the databases though. Would I still have to have a translation in every language? and does the recipient have to hav firefox? If they already have firefox dont they already have access to this?

Jeanne



jaybee -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/27/2007 11:27:31)

OK, with both above suggestions if the site is to serve up a foreign language then you would have to do it. Use Fox lingo to translate and then add the translation to the database. I really don't think there is a viable alternative.

I've tried Bablefish in the past and it's useless. A very serious piece I did and then translated into Spanish had them rolling in the isles. They said it was the funniest thing they'd read in ages. [&:]

With Fox Lingo yes the visitor could use Firefox and translate for themselves but that's not a satisfactory solution.

So you could try babelfish but get someone to read a translation first to make sure it makes sense. What's the code you've been given and where are you trying to put it. (in detail please)



jaybee -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/27/2007 11:33:17)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Godsgirl

Thanks for your reply. We know this is true, BUT we would need 12 different laguanges

We personally have the human ability to translate the page into German, Spanish, French, Portugese, Serbian, Hebrew & Greek, but that does not help us with people who speak other languages and would mean the website would be unreasonably large.
I personally don't want to pay Tom for the bandwidth!!!

Other thoughts?

Babelfish only translates into English, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese so it's not going to help you.

As for bandwidth, shouldn't make any difference, people will only download the page they want, they won't be downloading the entire site.



jaybee -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/27/2007 11:38:53)

This one includes Russian



Tailslide -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/27/2007 11:48:12)

If you're going to try to translate it into Hebrew you'll need to worry about right-to-left text too which requires additional coding not to mention worrying about all the different encodings required for the different pages.



skrile -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/28/2007 14:06:36)

Oh my is this a topic near and dear to my heart. First, a warning. I know a lot about this and may not be too concise.

I must start by saying that I don't believe feeding this through a language sausage grinder is a professional solution. It will yield results, but so will my 3-year-old when I ask him the square root of 49.

So, if you want multi-lingual support, you have to start thinking about databases and database-driven pages. You have to accept that doing a truly multi-lingual site will absolutely NOT be easy.

There are so many things to think about if you are interested in making it look and work as expected. Here are some of the things you will have to consider:

  • Your page is set up to display all characters for all languages
  • All number, dates, currencies, and other locally-differing presentations are considered (i.e. many European countries display numbers with commas where a North American expects points.
  • Cross-browser support for multiple languages can be quite tricky, especially if you find yourself *gasp* relying on Microsoft conventions for localization.
  • There are many things that need to be translated, not just <body> text: drop-downs, menu items, buttons, etc.
  • You absolutely cannot have any images with words on them. Take a look around your site and see how many places that occurs!


And this is just the tip of the ice burgh. I'm not trying to freak you out, but before you commit to offering this type of support, you really should know what you are in for. I have designed several company web-based systems now that are multi-lingual, and the effort to do it is not trivial.

All that being said, having a multi-lingual site is perhaps the most fulfilling thing I've done. When I see that language is no longer a barrier to accessing the information in my systems, and users from literally remote parts of the world can be connected to a global solution, that is quite satisfying.



harleyr -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/28/2007 14:41:58)

Hi all,

I completely agree with Steve, that a true multi-lingual, data-driven web site is not something to be taken on lightly. To really get a professional presentation of a company across many different languages and business cultures can require deep localization. If you then have to handle updates frequently and efficiently, all the gaps in your solution will quickly make themselves evident. But, if you're doing business online in Europe, in Canada or across the world, that's just what you've got to do to succeed.

But, what if you have a more casual web site or a smaller budget? I can't help but wonder if a less involved solution using XML and XSL is possible.

quote:

ORIGINAL: skrile
  • Cross-browser support for multiple languages can be quite tricky, especially if you find yourself *gasp* relying on Microsoft conventions for localization.


    • Could I ask what specific issues you're referring to there? Is that the support in ASP.net for resources? What specific conventions for localization cause cross-browser issues?

    quote:

    ORIGINAL: Tailslide
    If you're going to try to translate it into Hebrew you'll need to worry about right-to-left text too which requires additional coding not to mention worrying about all the different encodings required for the different pages.


    While there are clearly font and layout issues specific to the different languages, the encoding should be handled well today by UTF8, no? Expression Web is quite adept at dealing with all these different languages and often defaults to UTF8.

    Harley Rosnow




    skrile -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/28/2007 15:08:09)

    quote:


    Could I ask what specific issues you're referring to there? Is that the support in ASP.net for resources? What specific conventions for localization cause cross-browser issues?


    Well, I suppose I was referring to things like these lines from my pages: 

    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="<%=languageid %>">


    or even 

    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />


    Pretty straigh-forward stuff, but if you are using out-of-the-box designs for your pages there can be many headaches getting your metas and html tags to generate consistent results. For instance the original poster's site looks to be heavily relyant on FrontPage to "take care" of all these settings. With meta tags reading: 
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">

    and 
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">

    the page will likely not render properly if the user's browser has different settings for language. Now, to be fair, most "modern" browsers can figure out the character sets and display as expected, but getting in your way-back machine causes issues.

    Then there is the issue of entering information. Selecting dates and entering numbers for instance must be handled very carefully to ensure what the person thinks they are entering is what they really are entering.



    harleyr -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/28/2007 15:53:19)

    Yes, you're right on many fronts.

    The original web site is highly FrontPage reliant. It uses shared borders and themes - that's going to need to be ported to DWTs and CSS to work at all in Expression Web. It also uses the IE-specific MARQUEE tag.

    As you say, input is really tough. On that web site, the input form on the Contact Us page is clearly going to cause issues. The format of addresses varies greatly from country to country. It's also likely another FrontPage dependency.

    The "Content-Language" is nearly unused by the browser, but it does control the spellchecking in FrontPage and Expression Web. It also can be used by search engines to know what language page they're dealing with.

    Since the "Content-Type" is specified, all browsers should render that very well indeed. You would have to go back very far, I believe, to find a browser which can't handle "windows-1252" today. It even worked well on the Mac last time I checked. If you find any examples of browsers (even old versions) not rendering pages properly, I'd love to see them. I'm especially interested if you find any pages that don't render correction in IE7. Unless the page is unmarked, the user's language settings shouldn't impact them too badly. Thanks,

    Harley Rosnow




    skrile -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/28/2007 20:48:58)

    You know, it's kind of funny. I wanted to give you a great example of some terribly horrific double byte presentation problem, and then, I couldn't dream one up. Isn't that weird. It's like, you spend so much time struggling to get all of the pieces working, problems you run up against and solve just become so much background noise.

    I know for the longest time I had trouble getting German characters (for instance) to consistently present. They would look OK on one page in IE6 then terrible on another. Correct in a form, but wrong in a drop-down. The problem was, as too many are, multi-factorial.

    Which I suppose was my whole point in writing this "advice". Multi-lingual is very difficult to accomplish. You have to fit together many pieces from many technologies for it to work just so. I guess I made it hard on myself because I didn't just build a site that presents various languages. I built a site where designated users could turn on translation mode, then alter any string, menu item, navigation component, and drop-down to their language of choice. This solution was a combination of .asp pages, SQL-server, and my latest favorite web-development tool, Visual Studio. Seems crazy to surrender all the nice formatting and presentation management tools of Expression (which I also have), but I'm all the time flipping between my .asp pages and database design, that Visual Studio works great.



    Tailslide -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/29/2007 1:58:51) 

    windows-1252

    No good for Hebrew and probably not for Greek either.

    You're better sticking to the non-proprietory microsoft content-type UTF-8 which is the generally recommended one these days. Plus it has the advantage of working across all these languages.



    jaybee -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/29/2007 3:28:57)

    Good heavens! Harley? Delighted to have you on here and welcome. Since you mention UTF-8, did you work on the development of EW as well as FP? If so, BOMs are driving me nuts and I'd appreciate a chance to have a chat either off line or in another thread so as not to derail this one.



    Godsgirl -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/29/2007 3:44:24)

    Thanks for all of your help. I did not realize building a multi-lingual site would be such a task. UGH.

    While talking to a German language translator yesterday he had a solution. Why not ask people who come to the site to be translators. Like the Wikipedia idea. They would become the translator for their language and be responsible for all the things like localization etc. It is an idea we are considering at the moment.

    The code I am trying to use is the one generated from Bablefish. It is found here http://www.altavista.com/help/free/free_searchbox_transl

    When I put the code in my HTML it simply shows the code and nothing else.



    jaybee -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/29/2007 4:09:45)

    How are you putting the code in? If you're doing it from the design view then it won't work, you have to use code view.

    If you can get translators that's the best way to go about it but you'll need a content management system so that they can all get in to update it and make sure they're trustworthy. If one of them has a grievance at any time, how do you know what they've written if you can't speak the language?



    skrile -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/29/2007 6:25:13)

    Yeah GodsGirl, I was going to mention this yesterday but forgot. The is a lot of text on your site. The Wiki idea is fine (and in essence the approach I have used in my company using our own employees as translators) but there is, as Jaybee mentioned, a major exercise in faith (pun intended [;)]).

    If you regularly update the content of your site with news and other such things, you will need a method of displaying your text whether it has been translated or not. So, you can divide your needs into two catagories: static omni-present text, and dynamic ever-changing text.

    Maybe the first approach you could take is to have the static portions of your site translated from a trusted source and then set up your web with identical pages separated into language roots - something like "mysite/english/", "mysite/polish/", etc.

    This is a very long-handed way of maintaing language translations, and if you were going to have a lot of text changing a lot over time it would be a terrible way of handling it, but for pages that rarely change, this could be a fast way of giving your users a choice of languages to choose from.

    The database-driven model discussed further up is more flexible and allows you to seperate content from design (a better direction in my opinion), but will require you know much about database and .net (or .asp) page design.



    jaybee -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/29/2007 9:33:55)

    quote:

    Ergonomist
    I'm worried now. Is it painful? [;)]



    skrile -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/29/2007 9:35:42)

    Damned ambition and idol curiousity



    harleyr -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/29/2007 10:09:45)

    With FrontPage and Expression Web, you can use any characters from Unicode with any page encoding. When they write out the page and they find characters outside of the currently selected encoding, they will write them out as numeric character references like "FC;" or "α".

    So, windows-1252 will work with either Hebrew or Japanese. The problem with doing that is bloated size of the file and the difficulty of editing the soure. So, don't do it! If you use UTF8, you'll get a fairly compact file (the Hebrew characters are 2 bytes and the Japanese are 3 bytes each). It will be completely editable in source view.

    Now I've got to go find out what's wrong with BOMs. Thanks,

    Harley Rosnow



    jaybee -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/29/2007 10:33:34)

    Ahhh you see, you should have signed on as Fred Dibnah or something unrecognisable. [:D]



    harleyr -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/29/2007 10:57:58)

    Yes, that would have been wise. It probabaly would have let my ncrs through unmunged. & 3 0 F C ; and & a p o s ; Let's see if that works.



    jaybee -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/29/2007 11:05:20)

    You mean &apos; and &3OFC;

    The secret is available for large sums of cash. [:D]



    Godsgirl -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/29/2007 16:51:32)

    LOL Ok I would like to say you guys are alot of help, but ;)

    Seriously, since I don't have alot of cash or alot of time to spend figuring this out let me ask again. It is not that the code does not translate, it is that it either takes off all of my graphics for one little translating graphic or it just shows the code on the page. I am having a hard time find a place for the script in the HTML code.

    now are you all as confused as me. This is what you get when you let a blonde work with HTML ;)

    Jeanne
    ===============
    www.healingcommunities.org



    jaybee -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/29/2007 17:16:44)

    Where on the page are you trying to put it?



    skrile -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/30/2007 6:16:50)

    What?!? You had an original question???[;)]

    This works for me. 

    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title>Test Language Page</title>

</head>

<body>
<script language="JavaScript1.2" src="http://www.altavista.com/static/scripts/translate_engl.js"></script>


    <div class="header">
	   <div class="hmiddle">Test Text</div>
    </div>
</body>

</html>


    Just put everything between the <script language="JavaScript1.2".............</script> tag where you want the Babel Fish icon to show. This will only work on web pages that Babel Fish can see. So, for your public site, it should work fine.



    NECOWebGuy -> RE: Foreign Language Translation (3/30/2007 10:38:19)

    Hi Godsgirl -
    Just got the email newsletter link to this discussion minutes ago so I apologize for not responding earlier. Some items I'd like to share my views on:

    1. Yes, in translating languages like Hebrew you will need to be sure that the language is set in the DTD call or elsewhere in the text. You may also need to invoke the dir attribute, which can be used in individual <p> or <div> tags, or in the <body> tag to affect the entire page. Just use <body dir="rtl"> to make the page render from right-to-left.

    2. Using the online translators is ok, and I understand that translators are expensive, but if you can create some text and then hand it to a translator to edit, it shouldn't be as much as translating the whole thing.

    3. Translating into languages that use different symbols (Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Russian) is particularly difficult and your best bet is to get a translator and make sure it's done right.

    4. Keep in mind that some expressions in English may translate accurately but still be amusing or worse - meaningless - to a foreign reader. Example: I worked for a software company that decided its new tag line would be "Bright Ideas in Network Storage." Easy enough, right? Well, the day after we updated our German (.de) site, the regional manager called me up and explained that "bright" has no alternate meaning in German translation as "intelligent" or "clever." The nuance of the tag line was lost on our audience. We had to create something separate for the German users.

    5. Even a native speaking French Canadian uses the language differently from a French speaker from France. Again, dialect may impact meaning. I worked with a woman from France when I lived in Canada and she said all the Francophones she spoke to sounded like farmers. Not just accent, but choice of words, etc. Such nuances can carry over in writing.

    6. I'd recommend that unless you can get a reliable native speaker of any language you want to translate into, don't attempt localizing without at least a professional edit of any translations. You may be able to find good, inexpensive translation help through colleges that teach other languages or even have foreign language clubs. Or even English as a Second Language offices - they may know someone who speaks the language you need, and they'd probably appreciate the work.

    7. Just a dumb thing that I've seen overlooked in the past: if you include buttons or links to various versions of pages in other languages, don't label them "Spanish, "German," etc. Foreign speakers will expect to see "Espanol" or "Deutsche."

    Good luck!




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