I've just added the recently-released Google Translate gadget to my blog, which you can see at the top of the main page and also each post and archive page. This means a visitor to my blog can automatically translate any page they wish into their choice of, currently 34 different languages, just by selecting the language from the dropdown. (The translation may not extend to the last part of the page for a long page like my blog's main page, but it does most of it; you can also go to an individual post's page alternatively, and translate just that.)
I used to have some auto-translation code which actually just makes use of the same Google translation mechanism behind the scenes - in fact I still have that facility, as you can see - but it was limited in the number of languages it could translate my blog into.
The shiny new Google Gadget not only is easy to add to your blog or site, but is also better in terms of the much bigger range of languages available - although the "Select Language" line is only shown in English whereas my old code at least indicates to people in their own language that a translation is available. Still, most people these days know a bit of English, so hopefully "Select Language" is enough.
I'll try it out for a little while, and then I'll probably remove the old code.
If you want the Google Translate gadget for your own blog just get the short script and copy and paste it into your blog template where you want it. (I centered mine, too.)
On Blogger just go to the Layouts tab, Page Elements sub-tab, use Add a Gadget and pick the HTML/Javascript gadget. Give the gadget a title of your choice and paste the script into Content box. Adding it to the sidebar's probably the easiest option - see this example.
4 comments:
Interesting... Can i check if the translation is correct? Is it easy to understand the translated results? Have you tested it before? Thanks.,
Only sure way to check it is with someone who knows both languages!
You can always try to translate something from another language you know to English and see how accurately you think it's been done. Personally I'm happy with the non-English to English translations, that's good enough for me, but everyone's different.
Thank you very much for publishing your post about how to add a Goggle Translate bar to Blogger. You've been a tremendous help.
Nice greetings, Jona
Have you heard about Mojofiti.com? http://www.mojofiti.com is a website where anyone can get an international blog and every entry, email and group is translated into 28 different languages for free. It's awesome, finally a world without language barriers!
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