Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I wanted to get feedback from people who are doing this - and how the EPC is working out in other languages
And do you need a seperate URL for the international pages?
Go for it.
lG
What software or webpage can you use to make an automatic translation of a website?
www.freetranslation.com and babelfish.altavista.com are two sites that offer free machine translation. However, you shouldn't publish their translations without their permission for two reasons:
1) You'd be violating copyright law, and...
2) Machine translations aren't very good. As AltaVista's Babel Fish FAQ explains, "Expect Babel Fish to allow you to grasp the general intent of the original, not to produce a polished translation."
I know that it would be very difficult to get my site translated correctly, and can only imagine how much more it would be for a site about technical widgets or an operating system.
And I say this from the perspective of being fluent in spanish.
Doesn't make a single bit of difference to the Ads being displayed.
Is that my UK IP address google is "seeing" and displaying the UK ads? Is there anyway to "trick" AdSense so I could see the kind of ads being displayed on those foreign language pages?
TJ
not site / or host location
Page and *client* location.
TJ
By client - do you mean the user viewing it (or the host server)?
Translations will get you top rankings in the major engines [webmasterworld.com]
2. I had an Adsense site with over 400 pages, each available in 5 languages (translated by pro translators, word for word, the "expensive" way): English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.
CTR in non-English languages was higher than English (which was already pretty high), yet the ads were more generic (understandable as they probably have way fewer advertisers), EPC was half of english-language ads.
Overall EPC was low anyway.
YMMV
(I know we also need to hire pros to do the translations)
Any other feedback on how the CTR and / or EPC compares vs. English
CTR theoretically is the same for any language - earnings (at least in Spanish) are generally lower than the English equivalent.
The easiest way to check this is to use Overture's "view bids" tool and see what people are bidding for the terms in other languages.
However, you may find that the competition is less intense in some of the foreign languages - and therefore more lucrative in sheer volume.
AdSense is no good for Russian pages I suppose... I'll have to do about a month of grammar and vocab revision first too, probably... >;->
We translated part of our site in Japanese, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch etc and earnings are not bad.
And I say this from the perspective of being fluent in spanish
Wish I were! I only know enough Spanish to watch Sabado Gigante.
Machine translation worked for us as a first pass, and then we gave it to less-than-professional translators who were familiar with the topic (important) to clean it up.
There was one response in this thread which made mention of copyrights of translated materials.
Is there any question or gray area regarding the topic of who owns the copyright to a translated document?
I think you will find that a translation of a copyrighted work into another language falls under the category of "derivative works", which are protected under copyright law.
Of course, you are less likely to be caught, since exact phrases cannot be searched for, but that's not a basis for legal protection.
1. Yes, translating your content do worth it, and it means a lot of work too.
2. Machine translation sites are good, only for very simple phrases, and even in these cases they must be revised by a person who knows the topic.
3. EPC depends on language and geo-targeting. That makes it difficult to obtain useful information from the channel stats. For example, figures relatives to bilingual visitors English/Spanish who live in the US are together with visitors from Spain and Latin America countries.
