- cheapest site translation services?
- Posted by D. Wilson on February 26th, 2004
Hi,
I will be building a small informational website for a friend and she
wants it in 4 or 5 different languages. Have been checking out some
websites that offer site translation services. Can anyone here
recommend a good but cheap service? I am in the UK.
Many thanks.
Denise.
- Posted by Matthias Gutfeldt on February 26th, 2004
"D. Wilson" schrieb:
You should check in sci.lang.translation.marketplace
Matthias
- Posted by Maflu on February 26th, 2004
Matthias Gutfeldt wrote:
something useful: cheap = bad quality. And badly translated websites
look just ridiculous.
- Posted by Matthias Gutfeldt on February 26th, 2004
Maflu schrieb:
Thanks, I already knew that.
Matthias
- Posted by Sharon on February 27th, 2004
"Matthias Gutfeldt" <say-no-to-spam@gmx.net> wrote in message
Take Care, Sharon
- Posted by Matthias Gutfeldt on February 27th, 2004
Sharon schrieb:
As far as my own experience goes, running a foreign-language site
through an automated translation can give me, if I'm lucky, a rough idea
of what the site is about. But offering machine-translated content as
the "French version" or "German version" is not a good solution. Paying
a good human translator is money well spent.
I'm not in the translation business, so my opinion is not necessarily
very qualified. You should ask in sci.lang.translation for a qualified
opinion :-).
Matthias
- Posted by Eric Jarvis on February 27th, 2004
Matthias Gutfeldt say-no-to-spam@gmx.net wrote:
As online automatic translations go Babelfish is fairly average.
If you create the site using well constructed html and all the content as
text, then anyone can use an online translation service to get an idea of
the content in their own language. There is NO point in ever using them to
translate site content.
The results from even the best of them are patchy. It takes time to learn
to read the results. When I start working with a new language it generally
takes me a few hours before I'm able to really get to grips with the
output of the online automatic translation programmes.
My favourite so far is the English version of the Chinese equivalent of
"upload" as done by a translation programme that best remain nameless.
"The station ascends". I assume it's to do with the equivalence in English
of "channel" and "station" in a broadcasting context. It's the perfect
example of why you need a human being involved to get a coherent
translation.
Good translators aren't all that expensive. The most important thing is to
give clear instruction on the type of language required, formal, legal,
businesslike etc. And to colour code the document so that you can easily
tell which bits of the translation equate to which bits of the English
document. Otherwise you'll need to hire a speaker of the language to mark
it up for the web. NEVER ask the translator to also do the mark up.
Where online translation services really score is in dealing with email.
Again only if everyone writes in their native language and reads with the
online translation.
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
all these years I've waited for the revolution
and all we end up getting is spin
