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Add Translation to your blog
easyexpat
| 18 March, 2006 10:25
How to make foreign visitors love your website even if they don't
understand your language ? Add Language Translation to your blogs.
This is a simple Step by step guide to provide instant language
translation in your blog. Your site visitors can translate any webpage
by clicking on the corresponding country flag and read your website in
their native language.
Machine translation in blogs or websites is probably the easiest way
of helping readers from different countries communicate. Even if a
blogger writes in Spanish and a reader speaks English, or vice versa,
both of them can still understand each other.
Today, people are blogging in multiple languages to create a
conversation with readers outside the English Speaking blogosphere.
Free language translation tools let bloggers post messages
simultaneously in English, German, French, Spanish and other languages.
The most popular free Web-based language translation tools are offered
by Google, AltaVista Babelfish and WorldLingo. Using these services,
web audiences who speak English, French, Spanish, German, Italian,
Portuguese, Dutch, Greek, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified),
Japanese, Korean or Russian will be able to translate websites into
their native language.
With over 65% of web users speaking a language other than English,
providing the means of translating websites with English content to
another language is very essential. Your multilingual website becomes
more accessible and popular if users can translate your website content
into their native language.
There are two methods to let your visitors easily translate your website:
Method ONE: All these services provide a translation box. To
translate a webpage, you simply type in the URL of the website, choose
the source and target language, and click the Translate button.
BabelFish is the one we use on easyexpat.com when you click on Tool/Translate for a quick translation tool.
Method TWO: Here we will integrate the translation form in
the blog itself without requiring the user to visit any external page
for translation. Your web visitors will be able to translate foreign
language content into their native language by simply clicking the country flag icon.
Simply cut and paste the code into your pages:
1. Alta Vista Babel Fish:
Babel
Fish Translate is available in English, German, Spanish, French,
Italian and Portuguese. Just add the following single line of
JavaScript code to your website.
<script language="JavaScript1.2" src="http://www.altavista.com/static/scripts/translate_engl.js"></script>
For
instance, if you want to put it in your blog, you might edit Control
Center/Edit Template: footer.template and paste the following code:
<!-- Translation -->
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr><td>
<script language="JavaScript1.2" src="http://www.altavista.com/static/scripts/translate_engl.js"></script>
</td></tr>
<!-- end Translation -->
You can use the code generator from BabelFish - Altavista to generate the box according to the language of your website.
2. WorldLingo URL Translator: World Lingo is recommended since Google indexes the static URLs translated by World Lingo.
Thus, the blog can be found on Google even while searching for
non-english terms. World Lingo supports English, French, Spanish,
German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Greek, Chinese (Traditional and
Simplified), Japanese, Korean and Russian. The translated pages can even be bookmarked.
<!-- Translation -->
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr><td>
<table class="boxright" width="120">
<tr><td class="green">Translation</td></tr>
<tr><td>
<a
href="http://www.worldlingo.com/wl/translate?wl_fl=2&wl_url={$url->postPermalink($post)}&wl_lp=en-de"><img
alt="Deutsch/German"
src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/43/1633/320/13539933_041ca1eda2.jpg"
border="0" height="20" width="30"/></a>
<a
href="http://www.worldlingo.com/wl/translate?wl_fl=2&wl_url={$url->postPermalink($post)}&wl_lp=en-es"><img
alt="Español/Spanish"
src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/43/1633/320/13539946_2fabed0dbf.jpg"
border="0" height="20" width="30"/></a>
<a
href="http://www.worldlingo.com/wl/translate?wl_fl=2&wl_url={$url->postPermalink($post)}&wl_lp=en-fr"><img
alt="Français/French"
src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/43/1633/320/13539949_e76af75976.jpg"
border="0" height="20" width="30"/></a>
<a
href="http://www.worldlingo.com/wl/translate?wl_fl=2&wl_url={$url->postPermalink($post)}&wl_lp=en-it"><img
alt="Italiano/Italian"
src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/43/1633/320/13539953_0384ccecf9.jpg"
border="0" height="20" width="30"/></a>
<a
href="http://www.worldlingo.com/wl/translate?wl_fl=2&wl_url={$url->postPermalink($post)}&wl_lp=en-pt"><img
alt="Português/Portuguese"
src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/43/1633/320/13539966_0d09b410b5.jpg"
border="0" height="20" width="30"/></a>
<a
href="http://www.worldlingo.com/wl/translate?wl_fl=2&wl_url={$url->postPermalink($post)}&wl_lp=en-ja"><img
alt="日本語/Japanese"
src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/43/1633/320/13539955_925e6683c8.jpg"
border="0" height="20" width="30"/></a>
<a
href="http://www.worldlingo.com/wl/translate?wl_fl=2&wl_url={$url->postPermalink($post)}&wl_lp=en-ko"><img
alt="한국어/Korean"
src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/43/1633/320/13539958_3c3b482c95.jpg"
border="0" height="20" width="30"/></a>
<a
href="http://www.worldlingo.com/wl/translate?wl_fl=2&wl_url={$url->postPermalink($post)}&wl_lp=en-zh_cn"><img
alt="中文（简体）/Chinese
Simplified"
src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/43/1633/320/14324441_5ca5ce3423.jpg"
border="0" height="20" width="30"/></a>
</td></tr>
</table>
</td></tr>
<!-- end Translation -->
The above World Lingo Translation Code is customized for the BlogExpat
Template. I put the word TRANSLATION in the title of the box. Since I have added translation to every page on the blog, I
have used wl_url={$url->postPermalink($post)}
in the URL.
If you want to translate from other languages than English, just change the variable wl_lp. For instance wl_lp=fr-it to translate from French to Italian.
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Source: this article is an adaptation of an article on Digital Inspiration.
