Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Translation Buttons Added

I've been pleased to get a number of visitors from various countries around the world: the UK, New Zealand, Australia, as well as countries where English is not the first language, such as Finland, Brazil, France, etc. I thought it would be fun to make it a little easier for international visitors to read the site, so I added Google's translation buttons in the middle column below the search boxes. Of course, from playing around with it a little, even with my limited language skills I can see that there are a few problems!

Here's my "New Look" post, translated into French:

Oui, jeu immobile autour avec mon calibre, puisque j'avais voulu aller de nouveau à 3 colonnes. Que pensez-vous à la nouvelle conception ? Je dois tordre quelques choses mais me fais toujours savoir si quelque chose semble cassé, ou si la largeur fixe est un problème…
I could see right away that "jeu immobile" was a problem. "I am still playing around with my template" should have been something more like "joue encore avec..." but the translator saw the word "still" as meaning "immobile" rather than "continuing to." If I used Google's language tools to translate that text back into English, I get this:
Yes, motionless play around with my gauge, since I had wanted to go again to 3 columns. What do you think of the new design? I must twist some things but always let me know if something seems broken, or if the fixed width is a problem…
rather than the original
Yes, still playing around with my template, since I'd been wanting to go back to 3 columns. What do you think of the new design? I still need to tweak some things but let me know if anything looks broken, or if the fixed width is a problem...
So, not perfect, but it actually gets the gist of most things. They just need to twist it a little!

2 comments:

Rad said...

I like the new template. Has a "cleaner" look with the 3 columns I used the translators just for fun, very nice feature. Your goin global with this girl!! :)

mOOm said...

It's not so bad actually... but why does the translator re-translate the French in this post into a new French version?!