How do I translate a site into Chinese?

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How do I translate a site into Chinese?

alienthing

11:50 am on May 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

Hi
I was going to get my site translated to Simplified Chinese.
Does anyone have experience with this?
Is it just a matter copying from translated word file into dreamweaver and adding
<html lang="zh">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=gb2312">
<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="zh">
</head>
to the top.

Is there somewhere i can find sample of chinese text?
Also how does flash handle Chinese?
Cheers
PS sorry if i am in the wrong place, I am a first timer.

brucec

2:58 pm on May 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

I used babelfish to do this and it works pretty well.

primelibra

7:28 am on May 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

this is a good idea to translate website into international languages. you can convert your website into 30 international languages using online translation tools. you have to just type your url in that tools and copy the translated code.

<snip>

[edited by: Woz at 7:52 am (utc) on May 22, 2004]
[edit reason] no Self Promos please, see TOS#13 [/edit]

Woz

8:07 am on May 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

Hi alienthing, welcome to WebmasterWorld.

Translating is a great idea if you need to target a specific country, in this case, China. However, as with anything, if it is worth doing, it is worth doing well. Hence I would not suggest using any online translation tools if you are going to be placing the results in a webpage. They do a great job for a quick translation, but the mistakes that creep in could be quite damaging to your site in the long run. It is far better to get an experienced translater to do it for you, preferably one who is familiar with website/seo requirements. As you say, it is then a simple matter of placing the text into your webpages and setting the character sets.

If you have a web-savvy translator, you could even send over the templates and get them to translate straight into the webpages. However, you need to be careful they only alter the content/text and not the formatting.

A few recent thread on thi subject are:-

Translating exisiting pages to Chinese [webmasterworld.com], and

Which Chinese Character Set do I use? [webmasterworld.com], and

Encoding pages for a Chinese audience [webmasterworld.com], and an oldie but a goody,

Wading into deep water [webmasterworld.com].

You may also want to look at:-

Penetrating Asia [webmasterworld.com], and

English URL or Latinized Chinese URL [webmasterworld.com].

Onya
Woz

bill

9:50 am on May 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

I've got to back up Woz on this one...Don't even think of putting up BabelFish machine translated text on your site. People will laugh themselves out of your site. Just to get a feel for what your visitors will be seeing go to a Chinese site and translate it into English using your tool of choice...you'll quickly see that the quality is questionable at best.

shrirch

2:53 pm on May 23, 2004 (gmt 0)

Take a native chinese page and put it through a machine translator. After you've had a good laugh at the result, you'll figure out why something going the other way would not work for you.

svinfoex

5:11 am on May 25, 2004 (gmt 0)

I'm a native Chinese speaker. If you want to show me a couple of paragraphs of machine-translated text I'll be happy to let you know how good/bad they are :)

anallawalla

5:47 am on May 25, 2004 (gmt 0)

I'll second what Woz said. Find a native speaker in the country concerned. Sometimes, an expat might not have currency in the jargon, e.g. modern, high-tech terminology. In a previous job I had a web form authored in Korean in Australia and when the Korean office saw it, they ROFLd because the language was generally accurate but "nobody in Korea talks like that now".

alienthing

3:04 pm on May 25, 2004 (gmt 0)

Thank you all for your answers. I am just getting a sample of text from a translator to try out.
Does any one have any experience with javascript and chinese?
Cheers
Max

alienthing

3:38 pm on May 25, 2004 (gmt 0)

Just got a sample, all problems solved. Cheers all.

guoye

6:01 pm on Jun 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

I'm a Chinese. If you want to show me a couple of paragraphs of machine-translated text I'll be happy to let you know how bad/good they are.

guoqi

9:05 pm on Jun 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

Lots of Chinese here, I am one as well.

However, I guess his question is not asking about how to translate a text into Chinese but how to handle Chinese text, the charset.

I think, in windows XP, you can install asian language support package. After that, your computer will be able to display or even type Chinese. when you have that, you can handle Chinese same as English text.

I guess you don't need help any more. Good luck. Chinese people are very willing to be helpful. When you have question, always post it here...

bill

6:26 am on Jul 1, 2004 (gmt 0)

Just to add to what guoqi mentioned about Windows XP...you don't have to add in language packs the way you used to with Windows 2000. Most of the settings can be made from the Control Panel under the Regional and Language Options. On the Languages tab you can add just about any language you need. This may require your original installation disks.

Windows XP is a great platform for multilingual computing.