Just How Good Are Translator Plugins?

Everton | Mar 23, 2007 | View Comments


Martin from gHacks is recruiting human translators to convert his site into other languages so that he can extend the reach of his site. I’ve been relying on the troublesome Angsuman Translator plugin to automatically perform the same task on my site, but I’ve never really stopped to think about how accurate the translations are.

Can anyone tell me how accurate my translated pages are? Unfortunately I can’t do this myself as my language skills are awful as I didn’t pay a lot of attention in my French lessons as at my school taking a language at GCSE was optional, and I always knew I would take a second science.

I guess a second question is, do you use the translation service on this site?


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About the Author: Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University.He also writes for Windows 7 News, Windows 8 News and One Tip A Day.

  • rruben
    eej martin did you had Dutch on your website? I didn't knew that. I am Dutch but I prefer the original posts.
  • I'm sure lots of users would welcome an Arabic translation - I know I would. Gengo's support for right to left languages is still a little limited. Any feedback you can give me on where it can improve would be greatly appreciated. Stop by the forum if you get a chance to check it out and have some suggestions.
  • Have you had any experience with using it?

    No actually since my first language is Arabic and this plugin doesn't support it, but if it really helps people then I`ll consider make an arabic support for it in the future.

    Anyway, please share your experience if you tried it.
  • Howdy Everton - I am glad to see that you have taken the automated translator down. This technology is a long way off from working correctly, and I do not think it adds any "real" value to the site, other than confusing folks.

    I have tried out many different machine based translators, because my wife is Japanese, and I would love to be able to speak to her parents without using my very broken Japanese skills. I haven't found anything that works well yet. But, I'm still hopefull...
  • Mosey
    I think that's the one! Thanks for the link :) Have you had any experience with using it?
  • I see, I remember this plugin...lemme check my plugins folder....

    Hmmmm, do you mean Gengo?!
    It`s a great plugin..but you need to be careful using it!
    And it`s now compatible (the 0.9 version) with WP 2.1.2
  • Mosey
    Sorry, that didn't make much sense at all :p Was in a hurry at the time and wasn't thinking straight.
    I should clarify - the plugin allows the author to write out the document/article in more than one language, instead of having to rely on auto-translators like Google/Babelfish
  • Mosey said:
    (the translation is typed out by a human)

    I don't get it?!!
  • Mosey
    Just had a thought... what's the pluginthat allows sites to display in more than one language? (the translation is typed out by a human)... I came across it a little while ago but can't for the life of me remember where...
  • Great stuff. You’re the first blog I’ve come across that has human-translated sub domains. You just earned 1 more subscriber.

    Well TJP, there`re a lot of websites that offer "human-translated" articles...one of them who start to do this recently is the famous WeblogToolsCollection.

    Anyway, Martin`s idea is just great and can be very useful expanding your audience this way!

    Good Luck with that.
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