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March 09 Add Google Translation To Your Website And Become Truly InternationalAdd Google Translation To Your
Website And Become Truly International,
Is your website optimised for International
visitors? You should never assume that although you yourself only speak or read
English, your visitors might not. There is a free solution from Google
Translation Services that can solve this problem for you, so why not use
it.
I myself had indeed built my own website www.thecorner4women.com without ever realizing, or giving much thought to anyone but English speaking people. It never even occurred to me at the time, as I busied myself with the usual HTML struggles all webmasters and website designers go through. Although the common international unwritten language rule on the Internet is undoubtedly, web pages constructed in English, and indeed many sites will not accept postings in any other language. The Internet itself is expanding exponentially, into more countries, the infrastructure and availability through libraries, Internet cafes and the increase in home Telecommunication Systems with cable, dial up and the faster Broadband, all offering greater access by visitors globally. China, being a newly developing Internet country with its millions of eager nationals, all wanting to visit western websites. INTERNET DEVELOPMENT The Internet was originally founded in the late
1960’s, and indeed established by English speaking people, notably the USA with
its universities, being instrumental in its invention and future growth and
development. Libraries, scientist’s engineers and the US Government Departments
were its main users, plus a lot of computer nerds, the innovative 60’s “Whiz
Kids” who formed the backbone of Internet Development, and indeed many of the
original Internet Business’s and other computer enhancements. So it was only
natural that English was the first and only language used, with what after all
was basically a text based infrastructure, which was not very stable or user
friendly at the time, but it all played a vital roll in the birth of the
Internet we all love/hate and know it today.
WHY OFFER OR ADD TRANSLATION ANYWAY? As mentioned above I’d built my own website www.thecorner4women.com assuming every
visitor could naturally read English. Oh! How fickle I was, and I happily
continued building page after page without a care in the world. Then one day my
partner and editor Luella May received an e-mail from a lady visitor from Spain
saying how she had loved our site. Now this may seem strange to most, but the
concept of my humble site actually being visited by a person whose first
language was Spanish and not English, was mind blowing to say the least, and it
was at this single point in time that I truly realized how international the
Internet really was. It also showed me a fundamental flaw in my otherwise
perfect (well in my eyes at least, LOL) website design. Luella May in fact
originates from Cuba and speaks and reads Spanish, everything suddenly making
complete sense. My site was not optimized for none English speaking/reading
visitors. Indeed I also realized that non-English speaking/reading people were
in every country throughout the world and not just confined to their own country
of origin. I needed a solution, and I needed one fast.
THE GOOGLE TRANSLATOR
CODE
After extensive searches I decided to use Google’s
Translation code snippet to add a good reliable and trusted service to my
website. I’ve included the link to a text file below, with a small selection of
languages to get anyone started, save it to your computer as a .txt. Simply copy
and paste this code onto the page, using your html editor, where you’d like it
to appear. There are lots more languages available from google http://www.google.co.uk/language_tools?hl=en
and by modifying the option value lines you can easily include a larger
selection.
http://thecorner4women.com/DOCUMENTS/Google-Translator-Code.txt IN CONCLUSION
By offering simple translation on your own website
pages, you open up another area of potential visitors who would otherwise find
it difficult to fully understand your site. Your website would be better
optimised in the process and be offering a more valuable service to your
potential visitors from the Global Internet community. Many sites continue as
they are and fail to comprehend the benefits for everyone, and neglect to
capitalize on the non-English speaking/reading people of the world.
Offering translations allows you to become a true International entity on the Internet. By
John Elliott Aka Oaky Wood©2006 John Elliott Aka Oaky Wood is
currently the Agony Uncle and Co-Founder of "The Corner 4
Women"©2006 http://thecorner4women.com is a Poet,
writer, artist, webmaster and designer. He is also the owner of the
Oakwood Grafix©2005 Group of websites http://www.oakwoodgrafix.co.uk/ This article may be reproduced provided it is unedited in any way with all links intact, and the copyright is retained by its original author above. Comments (4)
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