Textpattern CMS support forum
You are not logged in. Register | Login | Help
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
#1 2010-10-31 09:53:49
- pixelcamp
- New Member
- Registered: 2010-10-30
- Posts: 2
Multi-language site - via Textpattern?
Looking at a CMS for creating a website – with content to be added in English; requiring auto-translation in Dutch and German (NOT 3 sites existing of manually translated content). Read so much positive feedback on TXP and users seem to be extremely loyal (having read a number of comparisons to similar CMS options), just wondering if this sort of thing is suitable via TXP or is perhaps best left briefed to a developer as a custom-build (rather than front end designer – TXP seems appealing in that a lot of good reviews are from designers). Thanks…
Offline
Re: Multi-language site - via Textpattern?
As a translator, I’m biased but to be honest I think it is a bad idea to present auto-translated text as coming from a person/company. The quality of the translation is at best understandable and at worst unintelligible or downright dangerous (depending on what your site is about). IMHO presenting poor content in one’s own name reflects badly on the site originator.
My advice if you want to show auto-translation would be to be up-front about it being an auto-translation and use a service like google translate that ‘instantly’ auto-translates the content on your page. That way visitors know it is a google (or bing) translation and ‘what to expect’ from that. That has a number of advantages: 1) if content changes you don’t need to update the other languages, 2) you can implement many more languages, 3) you don’t need a multi-language site setup at all, and 4) it is very easy to implement – either use the code given on the google translate tool or use the rah_google_translate plugin which has a slightly reduced UI. You can see the latter in action here.
One further tip: if you have pages that involve some kind of transaction (paid or not), e.g. where people need to agree to something like a purchase, signup, registration form … it’s best NOT to offer an auto-translation so that there can be no misunderstandings about what is being agreed.
I’m a loyal and enthusiastic txp-user but to be honest, this approach works with almost any CMS.
TXP Builders – finely-crafted code, design and txp
Offline
#3 2010-10-31 11:19:06
- pixelcamp
- New Member
- Registered: 2010-10-30
- Posts: 2
Re: Multi-language site - via Textpattern?
Thanks for your in depth and very helpful advice – much appreciated!
Offline