New Google Translator: Add Foreign Languages To Your Site
Google is ever the innovator. Google was one of the first to offer free technology that allows web pages to be translated into foreign languages on the fly. Called Google Translate, it was a pretty effective tool that we used on a few of our clients’ sites. (See the PuertoProperty.com site.) Google has taken something pretty good and made it even better!
One new feature is that, after installing the Google Translator code, when someone arrives at your website whose browser is set to a language different than what you are using, they’ll be prompted to automatically translate the page into their own language. If the visitor’s language is the same as the language of your page, no translation banner will appear.
I added the new translator to this blog site over in the right-hand sidebar. Go ahead and give it a try! One difference I noted between this new one and the old one is that its footprint on the page is much smaller. Also, it seems to be a bit faster than before.
The new translator allows you to specify exactly which languages you wish to provide translations for. The default setup provide translation into 51 languages, which is how I have it set up here.
If you want to try this for yourself, here’s the link to the Google page with the code for the translator. Contact us if you would like help setting this code up on your site.
Don’t Forget Bing!
Not to be outdone, Bing (Microsoft) also now offers a translator. I have included it here just below the Google one. If you want to try this one you can click here to get it.
Comparisons
I’m not qualified to judge the quality of the translations. From the evals I have read on the Web it seems that both do about the same job.
I don’t like how large the Microsoft widget is on the page. I prefer Google’s smaller size.
The Microsoft tool offers 20 languages to Google’s 51, but I expect that they will be adding languages in the future.
In my unscientific testing of the speed, the Google tool seemed to complete its translation of a page faster.
On a usability note, I liked how Google’s tool starts translating as soon as you select a language from the drop-down. The Microsoft tool requires two clicks: one to select the language and the other to start the translation.
Lastly, and certainly least, the Google widget is deployed which much less, more elegant, code!
But heck, they’re both free, so why complain?
Contact us if you would like help setting either of these translators up on your site.
1 Comment
October 28th, 2009 at 6:57 am
We use this on our Article Advocates site, but I have had others test this in Russian, Arabic, Japanese and French, and they all say it works a little bit, but is not perfect by any means. What is nice is that as Google improves the algorithm for the translations, the translations will improve too.