May 24, 2012

How to Translate Your Website with Google Translate




How many people are on your blog or website right now? All the readers visit your site may have similar interests and with the intention of making use of your blog or website. Absolutely, you may try to write in your native language or if you think beyond, you will come up with an international language as your site language. But do you know how many of them comfortable with your language used in your blog or website? Some may just leave your site just because of the language. You can track your visitors by region and offer same content in different languages if you wish to. But it may need more effort and that may consume lot of time for you. However don't do it. I don't think anyone will try it too. Due to language differentiation, some people may not able to make use of your site though you have got very useful information. Wouldn't you mind offering your content in their preferred language?


Why Do You Need to Offer Translated Content?


Absolutely, you don't need to if you are not aware of sales, conversions or if you are deal with people who can speak your language. But if you have to communicate with a global community, you have to think twice or even more about it. As you deal with global community, if you like to grab each opportunity and think about visitors' usability of your site, you have to be convenient with the people land on your site. Even you provide information on your website in a different language they don't speak, the information integrated can be still valuable for them. Obviously, information is always valuable no matter what language it has been presented. As we talk about convenience, offering translated content could lead you to more sales, purchases or increase of visitors or readers. Else if you are offering a service, it will help users to make more out of it without your assistance too. So offering translated content is a must, when you deal with global community.


Google Translation Service


As a solution for the language usability, Google offers you Google translation service which can translate your site content to another language. Google translate supports over 50 languages and you can count on more languages in future. You can't have all languages from it, but you can help out more people than your native speakers. Definite improvement of usability. Visitors will able to read your content by just using Google Translator widget to translate content or automatically it will translate according to visitor if you set up so. So you won't need to worry about the language you use in your blog or website and the readability of your visitors. Google Translator will enhance the productivity of your site and it will give you a boost in traffic too. Still thinking about it? You kidding me.


Before You Go:

* You need to have a Google account to use Google Translator. If you have no Google account already, create a new Google account and proceed with below steps.

* If you're a Blogger user, you can add translate widget easily on Blogger. Read Translate Your Blog into Different Languages with Google Translate in Blogger.


Steps:

1. Sign in to your Google account.

2. Go to Google Translate Manager page.

3. Now enter your website URL in the given field.

4. Select your primary website language under Website language heading  and click Next .

5. Now select languages you need to support by Google translate. Either select All languages or specific languages if you are certain about visitors of your website.

6. Select display mode of your translation widget - Inline, Tabbed or Automatic, as you prefer.

Note: If you selected Display Mode as Automatic, you will not be able to see a widget on your blog or website.

7. Make sure to enable option - Automatically display translation banner to users... under Advanced Options.

Notes:

* If you use multiple languages on your blog or website, enable Your page contains content in multiple languages option.

* If you wanna track how many users have been using Google translate on your site via Google Analytics, enable Track translation traffic using Google Analytics and provide your Google Analytics Web Property ID.

8. Now click Get Code button.

9. You will be given code snippets to add to your site. First, grab meta tag for your site and place it just before </head> tag and place translate plugin code just before </body> tag.

Note: If you are a Blogger user and wanna add it as an element, you can add your button code snippet via HTML/JavaScript element. Read How to Add an External Widget or Codes to Blogger.


More Information:

* If you wanna customize your translation code again and place on your website, navigate to Google Translate Manage Settings to customize and grab the code.


Enjoy :-)




Awesome! Thanks for coming by and taking your time to read this post :) I hope you have learnt something today. Now you can share it with your friends and I'd love to hear from you too.






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Sylviane Nuccio said...

Very interesting Mayura,

I use Google translate a lot as a base for my translations that I do for work to move faster, however, Google translate being a software, not a human being, there are always errors left behind. If at all possible, I would always advise anyone using Google translate to have a real person edit the work.

If you know anyone needing this service, you can send them my way for French or Spanish ;)

Thanks for this great info, Mayura :)

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Sylviane,

You're making a good point and I have to agree with you :) It's a software and we can't solely depend on it.
I've started to use Google Translate on my blog so late. As more visitors land on my blog, I found some increase of bounce rate of my blog. I thought it might have something to do with content (However my content is not the perfect in this world), but as I dig more deep into stats I found some people just land and leave my blog. The common reason was the language. Non-english users were most among them and I start to use Google translation service from then. That's what helps me to decrease my bounce rate and it increased average time people reading my blog.

As you've said, still it's a software and we can't 100% rely on it. But I think people are make use of it :) So I don't need to worry about non-english speakers land on my blog for some extent. I just helping them as I can. However I can't do more than that. no? ;)

Ohw... Sure ;) I'll definitely send you if someone needs help with French and Spanish ;) I know you're excellent at French and glad to hear Spanish too.

Thanks for stopping by and adding your views dear :) I appreciate that.

Cheers... 

Nicole said...

Holy cow!  Can I just thank you now!  I am literally doing cheerleading kicks and wahoooing my butt off.  I've been trying to figure out how to add a translate button to my network and didn't know how to do it.  Thank you sooooo much for posting this information.  I love it when people share things to help others grow. Thanks for passing it forward!! 

Mayura De Silva said...

Ha ha :D You can Nicloe. Welcome to Mayura4Ever. I'm really glad when I see people really make use of 'em. So you did. I hope your readers will thankful to you for adding translations. Now you're breaking limits and welcoming more readers to yours.

However it's not 100% perfect in translation, but people can manage it :) Isn't it so nice they can read valuable content eventhough they have been written in another language they can't speak? So now your content is not only for native speakers.

Thanks for stopping by and adding your compliments to color this post dear...

Cheers...

Jaimie Fayt said...

What's the translation banner? My language is different from yours, but I don't see a translation banner....

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Jamie,


You may have seen it on sites already :) Translation banner is the bar that appears prompting which language you need to translate on top of web browser. It does appear right after Google Translate detecting that your browser language is different from content language. Well, sometimes there are problems with detection mate.


Cheers...

Jaimie Fayt said...

Okay. Also, the code we put before the tag, does this go in the blog's html code?


I already put the code there, but I want change the code a bit. It currently says:





What do I erase to paste the new Google Translate code snippet?

Jaimie Fayt said...

Thanks. It's really helpful that you edited the post; that makes things much easier.

(I just noticed that if I have the Google Translate bar, the Hello Bar is hidden behind it; at least, it's not visible. Haha. But that isn't important.)

Merci. 

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Jaimie,

Things change time to time and sometimes I miss 'em unless I notified ;) It happens. Anyway glad you made it and thanks for helping me update it mate.

Yippy, I agree that it hides any bar on top of the page. If it's buggy, you can use visible widget on your blog. Well, it's your choice and depends on how much users need Google translate so badly.

Cheers...