I need some feedback that can only be given from someone who is NOT living in an English-speaking country. (I realize I may have to re-post this request in a foreign language forum).
I have posted a slide deck on some Technical content based on openSUSE on a Google Sites website. The documentation suggests that anyone who visits this web page either in a non-English speaking country or perhaps using a non-English web browser (that’s unclear) will automatically be offered to have the content translated into that User’s native language.
I need to know if this is true.
You can either post a reply here or PM me using the Novell messaging system.
It’s sufficient to either post “Yes, it’s being translated” or not, even better if a sample screenshot can be made.
Pls run your test on this page, the specific openSUSE presentation is the second from the top.
I confirm it’s not being translated, except for the bottom part. Which gets translated when I hit the “Vertalen” button …, i.e. the only dutch gets translated to some other dutch, the word “om” becomes “ohm” which makes no sense. The dutch we see would draw all attention from the content, since it will generate laughter all over the place.
I get your idea, think it’s the future we’re looking at, but the translators are way from perfect, at least in the dutch language. Some things become 100% nonsense.
also agree that machine translation is “not there yet” (though moving
fast, and some lingo pairs are far ahead of others…but afaik the very
best is just not there, yet–BUT, most are better than
nothing…however, as Knurpht hinted sometimes the translation are
dangerous: the user in danger of laughing themselves into a coma!)
finally i caution: make sure the user can easily have the documents in
their original lingo no matter the IP! i mean, i really hate it when i
go on line in (say) a McDonalds in Italy and see that i suddenly can’t
use (say) myspace.com because everything is in italian and stupid me
didn’t take the time to learn enough italian to tell myspace to STOP it
and gimme english!!
just because i happen to be in Turkey does not mean i learned enough of
a new lingo to switch klm.com from turkish to english (so i can check if
my flight is on schedule)!!
On 2012-10-23 15:25, dd wrote:
> finally i caution: make sure the user can easily have the documents in their original lingo no
> matter the IP! i mean, i really hate it when i go on line in (say) a McDonalds in Italy and see that
> i suddenly can’t use (say) myspace.com because everything is in italian and stupid me didn’t take
> the time to learn enough italian to tell myspace to STOP it and gimme english!!
Absolutely.
Another sample. I have a Kobo ebook reader. As I live in Spain, I get offered Spanish books in both
their web page and the reader, even though I configured English as my language and I do not want
Spanish ebooks (I can get them on any shop when I want: I bought the kobo to read in English
instead). I told the service people that I got results in English if I used a proxy, that they just
need to turn geolocation off and obey preferences instead… They said something about escalating to
the proper instance. Still waiting…
I hate people getting clever. If that is clever…!
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
French IP Firefox (windows 7) set to prefer French.
Not translated until translation is requested. To me, the translations seem a bit pointless as the slide shows obviously do not get translate. It is only practical if everything is translatable text.
At least firefox has an option to set the preferred language. Playing with that may or may not help with testing. It probably needs to be tested with some smartphones and tablets as sites often present things differently to those devices. Your site crashes my firefox on android 4.
gets translated when I hit the “Vertalen” button …, i.e. the only dutch gets translated to some other dutch, the word “om” becomes “ohm” which makes no sense. The dutch we see would draw all attention from the content, since it will generate laughter all over the place.