Translator!

[Charles Stover]

I've been screwing around with Google APIs, and I managed to code up a translator. I didn't expect to successfully get that far. It originally just translated the text in a textbox, but I've upgraded it to translate entire pages of text.

Here it is on ProBoards in a profile-edittable code. Stores the language in a cookie, so no need to modify personal texts or anything.

Clinger gave the go-ahead on it being allowed (not breaking TOS). Even though foreign languages aren't allowed, all the text is saved and all as English, and then translated to the foreign language after the page has finished loading.
I should prolly add a message on the post reply page that says type your message in English blah-blah-blah.

But, yeah. Whatcha think? Ideas, suggestions? Is it useful?
Code not to be released yet.

[iDunk]

Interesting. I don't think I'd personally see any need for it but others might.... :-\ Good work. =)

-iDunk

[Jordan]

Think we could see your work soon? It looks very interesting. :]

I think this would only be useful for a very small amount of people, but I could be wrong.

[Charles Stover]

I figure it could be useful to anyone who speaks English as a second language - or no English at all. Hell, I could use it to convert foreign messages to English before they're posted.
But right now I'm pondering the setup for the convert-from language. It's set up to automatically determine the language. It would be much faster if it just assumed the language was English, but I don't know if that would cross any errors on any sites. I'm not sure how often people have foreign characters on their site, and it would hinder any currently foreign boards (which there are a lot of, regardless of TOS) from being able to convert over to English.

[The Dark Knight]

How does it handle grammar? After language conversion, do the sentences make sense in the other language?

[Charles Stover]

Prolly depends on the languages being converted. Some would be worse than others, and I doubt any are perfect. But I'd think the more common language conversions like English -> Spanish would handle well. It's the exact translator that Google Translate uses, sooo... if you want to check its effectiveness, you can. I'm sure that, if it has any mistakes, it'll still make enough sense. Context clues FTW.

[daniel78]

Hi,

I had an idea for an asian site . Languages would be the major east asian countries. China, Japan, Korea.
Would there be terms of service problems if there were apps applied that would convert these languages into English on demand? Would Google APIs work as mentioned on this thread? Would you need Japanese, Chinese, Korean and English speaking Mods? Many Asians can read English even if they can't speak it well because it is taught so broadly in Asian schools.

[Trill]

Dec 18, 2010 17:16:06 GMT -8 daniel78 said:

Hi,

I had an idea for an asian site . Languages would be the major east asian countries. China, Japan, Korea.
Would there be terms of service problems if there were apps applied that would convert these languages into English on demand? Would Google APIs work as mentioned on this thread? Would you need Japanese, Chinese, Korean and English speaking Mods? Many Asians can read English even if they can't speak it well because it is taught so broadly in Asian schools.

Hi,

As per the new Terms of Service, foreign languages are allowed on the forum. To translate posts, there is a code in the [codeindex]: search for "Translate" to find the code. That code uses Google's Translate API as well.