How to offer this entire website in another language ?

I don't mean a Google Translate of a page at a time, but the entire 1.8 million posts translated into German and Spanish. And then any new posts in German or Spanish automatically displaying in English if one has the forum set for English. Apparently it can be done...but how ?

Ask Google...I am sure they offer that service, or they should :0

Make your website instantly available in 60+ languages
Add the power of Google Translate’s automatic translations to your website! The free Website Translator plugin expands your global reach quickly and easily.

Improve and customize translations with Website Translator
Website Translator now lets you to customize and improve the translations especially for your website!

Click to expand...

Imagine the chinglish we would get...

If I'm understanding correctly he's not looking to simply localize vBulletin - translating things like "Reply to Thread to another language - but to actually have all the content translated. There are 2 ways to do that - on the fly translation where there's a plugin for vBulletin that allows users to translate the thread they're viewing into another language, which has already been rejected, and en masse translation that gets store in a cache on the server so that all the posts are maintained in the database in separate languages. This increases overhead due to the requirement of translating all submissions into multiple languages as well as storing that data in multiple languages (in effect tripling the storage requirements in this case), but it's a more seamless solution.


I've heard good things (and some bad things) about VBET ( vBET - vBulletin Enterprise Translator - vBulletin Enterprise Transator ). You can get an idea of how it works by going to here and then changing the language up top. Note that some of that post was created in english, some in polish, etc. By default it only temporarily keeps the cache of various topics, but you can apparently customize it to keep the cache until something has been changed (eg. an edit) at which time it will re-translate.
Here's the feature list
Note: I have no affiliation with these guys, and haven't used the software. But I have heard from a few people who run their own small to medium forums that it works well. The cost is $90, they'll install it for you for $30 I think, and you may choose to pay for a commercial translator instead of the free Google or Bing.

Milacron,

My other post was exactly what you didn't want, but for $90 here's your solution.

vBET - vBulletin Enterprise Translator - vBulletin Enterprise Transator

This might be worth a read, some discussion there about modifying template code to use google translate.

Google Translate For your site - vBulletin.org Forum

There are websites that I'm sure many here have visited that have a flag for the language that is needed. Find one and contact whoever did the site that you have visited.

This could be as simple as visiting your favorite Porn site.

Tom

If the site is available in other languages, will the modrator accept members and their machines made in other 'languages"?

Stuart

Thinking about Chinese?

Sea Farmer said:

Thinking about Chinese?

Click to expand...

German and Spanish, as specified.

Hello, I am from IT in Mumbai. I am standing here beside my self with
joy, knowing of the excitement with which you are enjoying much
improvement in your user experience. We have taken pages from the book
of Microsoft and mixed them with Apples to make them easier to
swallow.

A machine translator like Google Translate would work superficially, but as a couple of the discussions I've had with Nick Mueller have shown, many technical, manufacturing and machining terms don't translate well through an online dictionary.

Then you have the issue of translating the member replies back to English.

I don't think the translation technology is up to the task.

Edit, to add: I work with a bunch of German engineers, and they all speak fluent English.

I'm sorry, but such a idea can only come from someone who only speaks one language. (Do you?)
You will laugh your head off if you translate "Ghost passes" to German. Or "Spring passes". Only think about the different meanings in your own language. "Spring passes". Now that means ... what a crap!
"Four flute face mill". Read that word by word and pick the other meaning. That a makes complete rubbish out of it.

You can try taking some English text, feed it to $translator, translate it to German and translate that back to English. That will be a lot of laughs!

Every language needs understanding of the context. The more specific that context is, the more (automatic) translations fail.


Nick

Nick Mueller said:

You will laugh your head off if you translate "Ghost passes" to German. Or "Spring passes". Only think about the different meanings in your own language. "Spring passes". Now that means ... what a crap!
"Four flute face mill". Read that word by word and pick the other meaning. That a makes complete rubbish out of it.

You can try taking some English text, feed it to $translator, translate it to German and translate that back to English. That will be a lot of laughs!

Nick

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I LOVE machine translators, especially when phrases such as 'Hydraulic Ram' get changed into 'Water Goat'.

thermite said:

The predecessors of modern German and modern English carry 70 percent or thereabouts common vocabulary. Even where each present-day practitioner-set now utilize the less-common alternatives of the other, most still exist in both languages.

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A lot of technical nomenclature is derived from English.

I tend to concur with others who express concern that automatic translation of 2-3 languages is beyond the reasonable scope of the infrastructure of the PM.

I would also ponder the use of idiomatic or colloquial language. For example, lets say someone posts using more a colloquial style (as we often see in postings here), but that style does not pass through the automatic translators well. The moderator is then left with an even more garbled translation and expected to make an editorial decision as to whether or not to lock the thread. If the thread ends up locked because of a broken translator rather than a bad posting, does that serve the intents of adding the additional languages? Broken translation of colloquial English probably does not serve a non-English speaker either.

I would suspect this would necessitate having European moderators in addition to the US moderators currently.

--Larry

This one works pretty well

Well, I don't think it helps to trace back the roots of words. For the languages discussed, that would be Roman. So we all speak Latin. Kind of.

..much of which was in turn derived from German. 'Bremsen' (DE) or 'retarders' (old UK) for example being less ambiguous than 'brakes' (US) a very small example of the rationale

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Good example! "Retarder" is a well know word in German, at least by truck-drivers. But it is NOT the brake (drum brake, brake rotor), but it is the brake-supporting system (hydraulic or what). Like a Voith-retarder.

One thing I can say for sure: I won't read any page that was automagically translated.

Nick

To do a really good translation IMO is, read the text, understand it, and then write it again in the new language.

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For the manuals I had to write, I first wrote them in English and then translated them to German. And German is my mother language!

Languages have a lot of idioms/patterns. The more you know, the better you can express what you want to say.

An other example: "Hutmutter" would be translated to "hat mother" of course, that is a capped nut.
"Messerkopf" is a "knife head", that only means shell mill.
And the always funny "3D-Taster" by Haimer. No, it doesn't taste like Schnitzel. "Taster" is feeler.
Then, there are brand names that occupied the generic expression. Like "Edding" for a felt tip, or "Uhu" (owl) for a glue, "Subito" for a bore gauge.


Nick

Nick Mueller said:

Languages have a lot of idioms/patterns. The more you know, the better you can express what you want to say.

Click to expand...

I know you have to filter usage of idioms -- we tend to say "in the ballpark", "piece of cake", or "balls-out", which will get you puzzled looks from European or Asian engineers
We had a female engineer who intimated that she was uncomfortable with the expression "balls-out", until someone explained the derivation

Here is one solution.


The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.