Outside The US

Jim,

Before I get working on this, do you have any tips on setting up a website to be read in many different languages?

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/11/add-language-translation-to-website.html

Thanks,

Roger

Filed Under: Optimization Techniques

Comments

  1. AMPC says:
    November 10, 2007 at 12:40 am

    Hello Roger,

    Do you mean a multiple language translator like what is found on this speed test site?

    By the way, what do you think about the site?

    Best regards,

    Jim.

  2. Actual says:
    November 10, 2007 at 1:20 am

    Jim,

    Yeah that would be great! I looked at the code behind it and was a little lost. So I copied and pasted the table from "Measure Your Bandwidth…" to and including the last language, German (Sprechen sie Deutch?), and pasted to a test page and it looks fine, but how do I get it to translate my text?

    This appears to be the buiding block

    <td>
    <a id="flag_de" href="???/de/" hreflang="de">

    <img id="flag_img_de" src="???/wp-content/plugins/global-translator/flag_de.png"
    alt="German flag" title="German" border="0">

    </a>
    </td>

    For This Line
    <a id="flag_de"
    href="???/de/" hreflang="de">

    I would put my websites address, I guess I would put a folder in with my regular files for my different pages and and call it de, and I’m lost on the hreflang="de". What is hrflang?

    Fot This Line
    <img id="flag_img_de" src="???/wp-content/plugins/global-translator/flag_de.png"
    alt="German flag" title="German" border="0">

    Looks like I’m going to have a depth of several folders.wp-content/plugins/global-translator/flag_de

    Thanks Jim,

    Roger

  3. AMPC says:
    November 10, 2007 at 1:40 am

    Roger,

    That is a plugin and you would need wordpress to use this one.

    Regards,

    Jim.

  4. Actual says:
    November 11, 2007 at 1:00 am

    Jim,

    Thanks but I just don’t have any interest in WordPress. Although it is in the back of my mind becuase of wordpress’ ability to get pages ranked really well. If I could pay someone to set my site set up on wordpress and all I have to do what I do now, add stuff, then I would be interested, although I’m not sure how I would relate it to nutrition.

    Thanks,

    Roger

  5. AMPC says:
    November 11, 2007 at 1:20 am

    No problem Roger

    Thanks for the information of natural cures! It is greatly appreciated!!

    Regards,

    Jim.

  6. Actual says:
    November 11, 2007 at 1:31 am

    Jim,

    Are you saying the language translator programming is available only on WordPress?

    No natural cures, just feeding the body what it needs, no different than water – you can’t cure dehydration.

    Roger

  7. AMPC says:
    November 11, 2007 at 1:40 am

    Anyone can use Google’s translation tools, but the one I used for the site above is a plugin and for wordpress only.

    The plugin is a complete system where as you would have to write something for a site other than wordpress – there may be something out there, I just have not looked yet.

    Jim.

  8. Actual says:
    November 12, 2007 at 1:41 am

    Jim,

    I went to google.com/language_tools but didn’t see anything like the flags of the plug in you’re talking about. That’s what I’s like to have, some programming where when someone want to view my text in their language, they just click on their country flag.

    Thanks,

    Roger

  9. AMPC says:
    November 13, 2007 at 1:41 am

    Roger,

    Try looking at ht tp: //babel.altavista.com/ and follow the link at the bottom (says Add Babel Fish Translation to your site).

    Perhaps ht tp: //translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Factualcures dotcom&langpair= en%7Cde&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
    may work as well?

    These services add a bar on top of your site (actually, they take your page and leave only a small section at the top to inform others of their translation services.).

    Something to look at.

    Regards,

    Jim.

  10. Actual says:
    November 13, 2007 at 1:41 am

    Jim,

    I see what you’re saying. Set up my own flag icons and put the web address of the translation "behind" it. Right?

    Roger

  11. Actual says:
    November 14, 2007 at 1:41 am

    Jim,

    If my site was highly ranked (number 1 say) and if Walter is back in Germany looking up plaque build up and types in whatever the German term is, would my site actually come up for him? I wonder if this language translation is really a rarely used convenience.

    To get the translation engine to be advantageous for me, won’t I have to have mirror sites in the different languages?

    Thanks,

    Roger

  12. AMPC says:
    November 15, 2007 at 1:31 am

    Roger,

    It does make a difference, I see it on many of my sites that have multiple languages.

    You can always test it yourself by using one of the Google data centers that services the country you are interested in, such as:
    google.de/ – Google German
    or
    google.es/ Google Spanish

    Now, if we are talking about China, that is a whole different ball game!

    Regards,

    Jim.

  13. Actual says:
    November 15, 2007 at 1:41 am

    Jim,

    That was interintesting, Google.de did bring up my site.
    Very rarely do I find pages in foreign languages when I search. Why?
    Do you that conversely foreign langauge searches bring up a lot of English pages?

    Thanks,

    Roger

  14. Actual says:
    November 16, 2007 at 1:41 am

    Jim,
    So do you think it’s worth the trouble to put up mirror sites in different languages – www.mysite.de? Your Google location guess explanation and English language site attracting visitors from foreign contries explanation seem to be opposites.

    Thanks,

    Roger

  15. AMPC says:
    November 17, 2007 at 1:21 am

    Let me further explain

  16. Actual says:
    November 17, 2007 at 1:41 am

    Jim,

    So what you’re saying is if I have a page heart.html make another page heartingerman.html. An put the German text in there.
    I think If I do that I’ll create a lot of folders in the "root". I have 27 or so pages times say 10 languages that’s 270 pages.

    Speaking of writing, I just bought some software for checking grammar. I’ll let you know what I think of it.

    Thanks Jim,

    Roger

    Oh yeah, here’s a Thanksgiving experiment for those who have a little circular patch of blood shot in one or both eyes. Try to eat a slice of pumpkinn pie the day before Thanksgiving, and two slices of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. That blood shot should be gone the next day.

  17. AMPC says:
    November 18, 2007 at 1:30 am

    Roger,

    You are right, you would have to create a large number of folders with many files.

    I’ll have to give the pumpkin suggestion a shot, however, I don’t think that once I start I could stop (it is my favorite), so it would be a whole pumpkin pie before and then during Thanksgiving

    Best regards,

    Jim.

  18. Actual says:
    November 18, 2007 at 1:41 am

    Jim,

    Is there anyway I can automate all this. All those files will make it very difficult to make frequent changes and additions. I geuss I’m back to the Google and Altavista translators – that won’t work becuase then I’ll lose the text for Google to search for. What are big multi language sites doing – all by hand?

    Thanks,

    Roger

  19. AMPC says:
    November 19, 2007 at 1:41 am

    Hi Roger,

    I do not know of any way to automate all this and I know for a fact that the big companies use human translators. If I find a way to automate language translation, I’ll let you know.

    Regards,

    Jim.

  20. Actual says:
    December 19, 2007 at 1:41 am

    Jim,

    That grammar software, Stylewriter, is Ok. A little expensive, but I decided to keep it. Aparently I use a lot of passive verbs instead of active verbs. I would say it’s a good complement to word perfect’s grammar checker, athough I haven’t used word’s grammar checker in 15 years so it may already have a check for passive verbs.

    About that Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie
    A little circular patch of blood shot in one or both eyes (about 4 o’clock position) is a vitamin A deficiency. (No idea why it causes this symptom but I see it in people on television and in person all the time). Beta carotene is converted to vitamin A and pumpkin is one of the best sources of beta carotene.

    Thanks Jim,

    Roger

  21. phenomenon says:
    October 25, 2008 at 1:41 am

    hi actual,

    i would not advise you to use any of the offered online-translators, since it all looks very much like a chinese text translated into japanese by a drunken bantu who barely understands english. believe me, in for instance a french surfer gets on your site and clicks on the translation to french, i’m sure that this is going to make him vomit, and thatfor consider your site as ridiculous.

    as you can see on nlwgames.com the site offers 5 flags, but you can be sure that all texts are translated accurately as needed. all it takes is just a little bit of php-programming and a cute template-engine!

  22. Actual says:
    October 26, 2008 at 1:41 am

    Phen,
    Where can I find the php code you’re talking about. View Page Source on the browser gives the results pf the PHP being compiled. Also, What do you mean by template engine?

    Thanks,

    Roger

  23. AMPC says:
    November 16, 2008 at 1:01 am

    Google looks at your computer’s IP address and guesstimates the location (US, etc) and delivers content based on these findings.

    If a person in another country has a site and pages that are in English, you may in fact find those pages included in the results.

    Now that you bring this up, we’ll have to keep our eye out and look for this

  24. phenomenon says:
    February 19, 2009 at 1:31 am

    hi actual,

    sorry for being that late, but as the saying says: "better late than never!"

    what i’m actually talking about is, that there’s nothing but a translation made oneself, of course assuming you master the targeted language.

    with "template-engine" i mean a software which allows you to completely separate your php-code from your html-code.
    doing this you just place within the html-code some place-holders with specific names, such as all texts i.e.
    let me give you an exemple:
    your html-code will than look like this:

    <font color="hex-code" …..>{text-to-place}</font>

    as you can see, there’s actually no text within the font-tag but a curly bracket with a variable-name.

    in your php-code you just ask the user’s navigator for it’s actual language.
    your php-code got to know which page is concerned (via a variable).
    in consequence to the result you should have a subdirectory ("lang" f.i.) and let’s say the result shows a "fr", which means that the navigator speaks french; so your php-code looks for a sub-directory named "fr" within your sub-directory "lang".
    once your php-code finds this very subdirectory it just needs to include the text-variables depending on the page’s name and tell the template-engine to replace the curly brackest by the found results. that’s it!

    i assume that within your php-code you have a default sub-directory which leads to "en" in case the navigator’s language isn’t found, which would make english to the default language.

    sounds much more complicated as it really is.

    the advantage of this method is that you can easily include more and more languages, since you only have to add the corresponding subdirectories and just need to translate the texts. very easy very fast. you’ll never have to touch your html-file of php-code.
    the inconveniency is that you absolutely need to do a real brainstorm of planning. but isn’t that the alpha and omega of programming?

    now to answer your question, where you can find the php-code i’m talking about: i couldn’t tell you since i coded it myself. nothing’s easier than that, believe me.

    the template-engine i’m talking about is: ht tp: //templatepower.codocad.com/

    have fun!

    p.s.: old programmer’s rules:
    1. "always do the hard part first! if the hard part turns out to be impossible, why waste time on the easy part!"
    2. "always do the easy part first! once you started, you’ll realize that it is in fact the harder part!"

  25. Actual says:
    February 19, 2009 at 1:41 am

    Phen,
    Where does the quality of the translation come in? What software does that?

    Roger

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