Internationalization - Part I

In this article:

1. SYSTRANLinks
2. Get Word Reference for your Website
3. WebPlexer

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SYSTRANLinks
Translation for Web sites
http://w4.systranlinks.com/config
= worth knowing

SYSTRANLinks Silver adds a "Translation Button" to your entire Website enabling visitors to click and receive an instantly translated web page on their browsers.

Through this method you can virtually make your web site multilingual in a few minutes.

Simple and easy-to-use. Offer dynamic and on-the-fly translation. All site updates are taken into account for each translation request. No grammatical or linguistic knowledge required.

There are three solutions available: Free, Silver and Gold.

1) With the Free SYSTRANLinks service option you get:

Free translation up to 16kb of data (about 8 pages of unformatted text) for up to 5 selected web pages.

5 bidirectional language pairs (English- European languages):
English <=> French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese.

Translates Web pages up to 16Kb.

The translated Web page carries an advertising banner.

It has a very simple and automatic installation procedure.
SYSTRAN servers are located in Europe and the USA.

2) The SILVER service option offers the following unique benefits:

Integrate hundreds of words in a user dictionary. 20,000

20,000 translation requests (or 200Mb) per month.

Translates Web pages up to 32Kb (about 16 pages of unformatted text)for all the eb pages of your Web site.

It carries a SYSTRAN banner.

It integrates a Personal Dictionary for up to 100 words.

The annual subscription cost for SYSTRANLINKS Silver is USD $999.

Two packages are available: -
English-European:English <=> French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese.

Free 6 day trial available.

3) The GOLD service option offers the following unique benefits:

14 bidirectional language pairs:
English <=> French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese
English <=> Chinese, Japanese, Korean
French <=> English, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch

500,000 translation requests per month allowed.

It translates web pages as big as 64 KB or about 32 unformatted text pages.

It provides topical glossaries.

It integrates a Personal Dictionary for up to 10,000 words.

It does not require the display of any promotional or advertising banner.

It allows for integration of your multilingual terminology.

There is a free 6-day trial available.

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Get WordReference for your Website
http://www.wordreference.com/
FREE
= must have

Wordreference for your web site is a service that allows your web site visitors to easily translate any word on the page to another language by simply double clicking on any word they choose.

The service is capable of remembering user translation language preferences by the use of cookies and to automatically translate any selected word to the language set on the user computer.

Not only a translation is provided for the word, but also a definition and a number of example phrases in which the word is used. Also a list of alternative or similar words is displayed to help researchers unsure of their spelling in a different language.

Visitors to your web site will be prompted on the Status Bar (bottom of your browser screen) by a "Double-click any word for a definition or translation" message appearing in each of your Wordreference activated pages.

To enable this service you do not need to redesign your web site and you can limit the implementation of the Wordreference service to a set of selected web pages. The only requirement is the installation of a Javascript snippet (piece of programming code) inside the HTML code of the selected web pages. With the free code provided you could modify your site in under an hour.

It supports English to Spanish, German, Italian and French

WordReference primarily uses professional definitions and translations from the Collins line of dictionaries from HarperCollins Publishing. The Dictionaries used are first quality and include:
the Collins Large English Dictionary (unabridged),
the Collins Concise Spanish Dictionary,
the Collins Large German Dictionary (unabridged),
the Collins Italian Dictionary and
the Collins French Dictionary.

System requirements:

Wordreference for your web site requires Version 4+ of Netscape Communicator or Internet Explorer under Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT. (It doesn't show up and has no effect for other users with older browser versions.)

The service is completely free.

(This free service sustains itself by providing commercial ads in the translation pages provided when using it.)

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WebPlexer
by Language Automation
http://www.lai.com/
= interesting, promising

WebPlexer is a web site server-side translation system that is made up of three key modules.

WebPlexer's Visitor module automatically determines the language and country of a Web site visitor and directs the Web server to deliver the appropriate localized content to the visitor's browser.

The WebPlexer Visitor module supports content in all languages and encodings, and controls the selection of browser font automatically. Visitor also provides an enhanced Web server log which gives the site manager a detailed breakdown of country and language for each visitor to the Web site.

Visitor also allows you to grow a multilingual Web site incrementally. You can choose how much - or how little - content to translate, while still preserving a seamless interface for the Web site visitor.

WebPlexer's Developer module allows multiple languages to be served from a single site. This is different from the traditional approach of building a multilingual Web site in which the site needs to be replicated and re-engineered for each language.

This structure makes the site more compact, reduces site resource requirements and lowers site maintenance cost. The cost of making a design change is also reduced as only the master site needs to be updated. There is no need to propagate changes through all language versions of the site.

WebPlexer Developer tool provides a toolkit that permits a master site to be built that is language-independent. The actual language content is placed in a WebPlexer database where it is easily managed and maintained.

When a visitor enters the site, the requested document is automatically served in the visitor's language by filling in a document template from the master site with the correct language content from the database.

Developer also supports a hybrid implementation in which static and dynamic content are combined within the same site. This approach allows locale or regional-specific content to be mixed with content that is shared across all countries or regions.

Keeping the translated content in a database also makes it extremely easy and cost-effective to add languages and grow the site. Adding a language simply involves translating the appropriate content and creating new entries in the database making it unnecessary to replicate the entire site for the new language.

For more information, please contact: Language Automation, Inc.
1670 S. Amphlett Blvd, Suite 214 San Mateo, California USA
94402-2588 info@lai.com tel: +1-650-571-7877 fax: +1-650-571-6294