Anyone have any experience for translating English pages to other language using on-the-fly services? Any recommendations?
If you use firefox, you can use foxlingo extension. It adds toolbar in your browser, so you can translate page more easily. You can also try Google languange tools .
I mean having users able to click a link and view your content in thier language by using an online service to perform the translation.
If it is an ecommerce site I would not do translations. What if the customer has a question, problem, or just needs to contact you? What if the translation software mis-translates a portion of the text? What about your legal documents - do they still hold true after being translated (wrong wording)?
For a content site, using a translator plugin for wordpress is enough. However for a business site, DO NOT use it. Hire people to make the translations.
Hello all, I am English but live in Germany and my experience with online translators is that they are not to be recommended, they constantly translate similar words in the wrong context. Gary.
I agree with this. Some of the translators I've used for translation to English were very poor. For a personal site they would be alright but not for a business site where you are dealing with legal matters. If you are strapped for cash, try contacting your local college and see if you can pay a college student a few buck to translate your pages.
Keep in mind, after translation - there is high chance you may receive emails in those languages - I already receive emails in French, Portugais and Spanish - even when my site is 100% English. I have no clue what those people ask me in the emails. You might end up in same situation. Or you can type big bold in English (if that is your native lang), please email us ONLY in English otherwise you will not receive response.
The site in question is a content site - gardening - and I suspect there is much value in the content for those who speak, say, Spanish. This is not a WordPress site, but a custom site and my preference is not for a second set of pages but an on-the-fly translation. I get little to no email about the content of the site as is so the concern about foreign language email is not an overly large one. It seems there are plenty of resources to translate the pages via the browser, but I would like to find this site serving more people via translated pages.
I sell a script called the Niche Mania Translator that is a wrapper for Google Languages - you can see a demo of it here: http://coffee-bean.my-coffee-house.com As others have mentioned, the actual translation is not perfect, but using this script accomplished two specific things: 1. It quadrupled my traffic from Google after the translated pages were indexed and; 2. It also quadrupled my earning from Adsense - seems like my foriegn visitors are not so "Blind" to Adsense. It's a sweet script - and cheap too!
Don't use script to translate your site. Use genuine translators instead. You can find them at translatorsbase.com Checkout my site with 10 languages left-handed.com
Ive posted my thoughts on using website translations on my blog. Basically, if "any website where clear legal terms are needed, support and customer – employee interactions take place, or money is exchanged, there should not be multiple language versions." However, if you can can speak, read, and write the language, then seize the opportunity.
I've done a site where key elements (menu headings, forms, etc.) were translated into multiple languages. I started off using machine translation, and then farmed it out to real live people fluent in the languages for editing. Trust me, the machine translation will give you the gist of what a page is about but leaves a LOT to be desired. If it's only informational you can get by with it, but if you're trying to running a business on machine translation you're in for a world of hurt. I also second the comment about expect to receive email queries in the translated languages. It's a two way street, and your customers will assume you can deal with them in the languages of your site.