website translation software / services ?

[mike2010]

It seems like this is a popular , new thing to do lately. Having icons on our sites of many different languages...when clicked on , our sites get translated into those languages for people from other countries to understand.

Is there a popular company most webmasters are using these days? I google'd 'website translation services' but saw a million noob looking sites offering the services. I can't tell which one is better than the rest or if just using a 'translation software' would be better. My site only has a couple pages , so it shouldn't be that hard.

I know these types of posts sometimes bring spam, so maybe its better to email me your opinion. Or just say the name of the service & not the website.

I just really wanna know which service is most popular right now, so I don't get ripped off using some noob service.

[Jon_King]

Google and Bing offer about anything you may need for free. Pretty decent translations by URL page or direct API call with what ever you want to feed into the translator.

[bill]

The recommended solution is to avoid any machine translation entirely. If you're serious about putting your site into another language then do it correctly. Have a professional human translator do the work, and if you're really serious then have the translated material copywritten for the local audience.

You are doing your visitors a disservice by using one of those machine translation services. They are only for getting the gist of what's on a page. The output is often incomprehensible. If you think you're doing your visitors a favor, think again.

[caribguy]

Agree with Bill re quality. Am using automated translations as a stopgap measure (via Yahoo Pipes). On demand via an AJAX call, and only on a section of certain pages (and also clearly labeled as automated).

[Jon_King]

>>using automated translations as a stopgap measure

Completely agree. The auto translations are not that good, a human translated page is the only way to go if you are serious about reaching international markets... but Mike did not ask if they were good or not :)

[mike2010]

I'm not really worried about precise accuracy. As long as its understandable in other languages, thats the main thing. Plus it'll help SEO.

anybody recommend anything or no ? don't have the skills or time currently to do it all manually.

[bill]

As long as its understandable in other languages, thats the main thing.

The thing is it's usually not understandable in other languages. 'Barely understandable' is more like it. What's the purpose? If you're going after a foreign language market, do it right. All you're doing is showing the customer that you care little or nothing for their market.

Here's a test. Go to a Japanese or Chinese shopping site. Here's a big Japanese one for you: [rakuten.co.jp...] Would you buy something from there if all they had was machine translation offered?

Plus it'll help SEO.

Exactly how will it help SEO at all?

[CenSin]

I provide goog ajax translate only for my article section. So it don't mess up and create other language pages. It's just a small favor for someone who need that tools.

Why I put it in? Because in my log, I saw some people using auto translate tool for my pages.