Internet users have the choice between several machine translation services that can automatically translate a given text or website in another language. Google Translate is one of the most popular services of this kind. It allows web users to translate text or websites into 51 languages. Google today announced that they have expanded their translation services by offering a translate gadget for webmasters. Webmasters can integrate the code of the Google Translate gadget into their website to offer visitors the option to automatically translate the text that is displayed on the website into a different language.
The process is semi-automated. The translate gadget will automatically compare the language of the website with the default language of the visitor’s computer system. If the two match nothing will happen at all. If the two do not match a toolbar will be displayed on top of the website with the option to translate the website into their language.
Installation of the Google translation gadget is simple. Just copy the code from the Google Translate website and paste it into an appropriate file on the web server.
Several aspects of the translation gadget are not clear as of yet as Google has not addressed them. Among them the question if the translated websites will be indexed by Google or if the code interferes with other code on the website. It should also be noted that machine translations are not perfect which makes the translation gadget not suitable for some types of websites.
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Without a doubt this is an interesting feature, but how does the translation actually read to a speaker of that language?
Presumably the translation is handled by the same engine as Google Translate. I recently blogged about this kind of machine translation at “Making Sense” (worldaccent.com/blog) and, more importantly, its dangers. It can be great for getting the gist of something, but is also often way off beam.
If a user runs your website through Google translate, they know its at their own risk. If you have “provided” a translation, aren’t you more responsible for what it says? As Bing Translator warns you every time you use it: “Automatic translation can help you understand the gist of the translated text but is no substitute for a professional human translator.”
And, unless you speak the target language, how do you know if your website is being rendered in perfect prose or as unintelligible gibberish? If you care about what “you” are saying in translation, you’re still best off sticking to a human translator.
That’s nice, previously webmaster could add translation buttons to their website but the users had to choose the target language manually. So now google uses geolocalization (based on the IP address presumably) to show the correct language. I wonder how they do in countries with several official languages (e.g singapore).
I the that this website should be open to everyone
i agree with you, but these translation services can’t support for professional or business project translations.
translation service did exactly what you said it does. Very easy to use. This is the most reliable thing of thing we’ve ever used.