Using Google’s Translate Tool on your Website
Have you ever experienced discovering a supposedly great site, but just cannot use it because it’s in a language you can’t comprehend? We can relate. We sometimes use Google Image search and it leads us to sites that contain the images we want to use or view, but we don’t have an idea as to the context because it’s in another language. This is especially prevalent when searching for gadgets online, especially since many of these new devices are introduced first to the Japanese or South Korean markets (such as mobile phones, laptops, digital cameras, PDAs and the like). Think Hello Kitty cellphone or the latest high-end Sony Cybershot.
Here’s where Google’s Translate tool comes in handy. You simply paste a few lines of text and select the languages to translate from and into, and then click the “Translate” button, and you’re good to go.
Google’s translate tool is far from perfect. This is because it’s software that’s translating the text for you, and not an actual person. There are things such as context and literary elements that require human comprehension in order to translate. Still, the translate tool is useful when you find yourself suddenly interested in a website that’s in another language. Even if the translation were not always perfect, you would at least have a general idea of the message the author is trying to convey.
Using it on your website
Here’s a tip. You can use Google’s translate tool to automatically translate your website or blog into any other language that’s available. Again, this is not as good as having a real person translate the content into the different languages, but it will help you reach out to a bigger audience. What’s great is that even the external links on your site will be translated the same way when clicked.
Here’s how to use the translate tool on your website. Simply provide links the following Google Translate URL to switch across languages.
http://google.com/translate?langpair=XX%7CYY&u=(your URL here)
Where XX is the code for the original language and YY the code for the language which you want to translate into. Simply include the URL of the site you want to translate in place of (your URL here).
So for instance, if we want to provide automatic translation of Googletutor into Spanish, we simply provide a link on the site to:
http://google.com/translate?langpair=en%7Ces&u=http://googletutor.com
Here are the language codes you can use:
EN – English
DE – German
ES – Spanish
IT – Italian
FR – French
PT – Portugese
AR – Arabic
JA – Japanese
KO – Korean
zh-CN – Simplified Chinese
For example, you can click here to automatically transalte this page to French. Or click here for Italian. If you choose, you can add easy links on your sidebar or header for auto translate.
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Share this post! 12 comments, add yours!
This is a great application of Google’s tool. I notice that I get a lot of hits on my blog from around the world. I’ve always wondered if they were dropping off because they couldn’t read English well, if at all.
Thanks for the tip!
Do I need any permission from Google for using it ?
dear sir
thank you for this feature.
I am unable to see images on the web page once the page the translated.
kindly help.
regards
ashok dhar
dear sir
thank you for this feature.
I am unable to see images on the web page once the page is translated.
kindly help.
regards
ashok dhar
Your site is also very interesting, very calming effect just reading it. Will spend more time with certain areas. Well done and good luck with your work.
The code provided here was really helpful but i m facing few probs, could u help me to dig out the reasons?
1. My site is getting distorted after the translation ..
2. How can i remove that google head frame (actually i want to get back to the original site after translation.)
The code provided here was really helpful but i m facing few probs, could u help me to dig out the reasons?
1. My site is getting distorted after the translation ..
2. How can i remove that google head frame (actually i want to get back to the original site after translation.)
Thanks a lot.
-Abhi
I’ve just realised that one of the pages on my website has been translated to Italian without me authorising it. I’m wondering how I can stop this from happening as I feel it’s been done without my permission.
Who do I need to contact to remove that translation and most importantly, how can I find out who has done this to ensure he or she doesn’t get to do it again without permission?
I’m feeling quite angry and annoyed about this.
Kind regards,
Alida Tassone
Google’s translation API needs some fine tuning I think. It has to make more use of a mixture of memory translation and machine translation. Machine translation, unfortunately, dominates the Net!
The code provided here was really helpful but i m facing few probs, could u help me to dig out the reasons?
1. How can i remove that google head frame (actually i want to get back to the original site after translation.)
I found this bit of html for google website translation very useful, but…. Using the clickable links once to translate website was fine, we I clicked the link a second time it took me to a url unfound page on google. Remedied only by refreshing the page by FTP’ing back online.
Any answers on this fault?
Would be nice if when being directed to a translated page that there could be a message in the language chosen that says something like: “this is an automatic translation and may not be 100% accurate’.