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Posted by Toby Inkster on 01/20/07 12:15
CptDondo wrote:
> But... I don't know the best way to do that. What is the current 'state
> of the art' for language on demand in web content?
Do you mean automatic translation; or do you mean serving up the best
choice of human-written translations?
Automatic translations are rubbish -- they are laughably bad, and will
present an entirely unprofessional image. Do not even consider using them,
except on a site that's indented to be ridiculed.
That's not to say that their completely useless -- tools like Babelfish
are useful for the *visitor* if they find a foreign site that they would
like to read -- you can usually get the gist of it. But for the author,
they are rubbish.
For human-written translations, assuming you have got good translators,
the situation is much better. Catering for a visitor in their own language
shows that you're willing to make the extra effort to do business with
them.
Many companies will offer entirely different sites for each language. If
you have the resources to manage such a layout, it is often the best
choice because:
1. It allows URLs to be tailored to the language. e.g.
/en/information/garden/lawn-mower
/fr/renseignement/jardin/fauchage
which should help with multi-lingual search engine optimisation.
2. It allows for a different information focus in each language.
For example, I was once told by a translator that translating
technical manuals between cultures involves so much more than
word-for-word translation. People of different cultures expect
to find different things in their documentation. Americans expect
the manual to be a tour-de-force of the product's unique features,
virtually an advertisement for the product; Western Europeans
expect a fairly dry step-by-step explanation of how to use the
product to accomplish different aims; Eastern Europeans expect
information on how to repair the product when it breaks, as in
their experience, these things inevitably do.
3. It allows you to take baby-steps. Say, you've decided you want
to expand into the German market, but you're not sure how much
business you'll do there, so don't want to invest a lot of money
having your entire site translated into German. You may want to
just create a single page site in German, with basic information
about your company, explain that the site's German translation is
still pending, that there is more information on the English
version of the site, and provide the telephone extension for Gunther,
who works in your New York office, but was born and raised in Munich.
As your German sales take off, you then plough back some of the money
into improving the German site. Perhaps one day, the German market
will be so important to you that you open an office in Berlin, and
allow them to maintain the German site directly.
The other approach with human-written translations is to have a single
site available in multiple languages. For example, you ask/detect a user's
preferred language, and then when they go to:
/information/garden/lawn-mower
a PHP script serves up the information in the correct language. If a
translation is not available for that particular page (say, it's a new
product, so the translators haven't finished with it yet), then you just
serve up the English page. This is a reasonably good method, but it
doesn't have advantages #1 and #2 above. It kind of has #3, but your
baby-steps look a little silly because they end up as a mixture of, in the
above example, German and English. This method can ease maintenance though.
Always be careful not to let the translated versions of the site fall too
far behind the English version in updatedness.
--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact
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