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UPDATE: even though I've put a bounty here, the answers provided are not even slightly helpful so save yourself the time and move on... sorry.

My URL is: http://colnect.com/en/forum/viewtopic!f%3D46%26t%3D35678

Click the "Translate" button offered by Google. This used to work just fine. Now it translates some of the blocks and for others shows only > instead of translation or keeping the original. I've attached here an "after" screen captures. If you follow the URL and try it for yourself you'll see more parts were being removed. Perhaps Google changed something in the way the button works or there's some Javascript bug there. Would be happy for any ideas here. Thanks

Note: cross-posted on http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/internationalization/rykImZlToVk

Collector
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  • I don't have an answer for you but, I am seeing issues as well. Until yesterday (Dec. 12) our translate worked fine. It would only translate if your language was other than English, otherwise you would not notice it.Starting yesterday afternoon it put a wide dashed line across the page with a translate icon, about half way down the front page. Does it in all browsers and we had not changed anything. So I am guessing Google must have made a recent script change? But don't know why others aren't yelling about it? – valis Dec 13 '13 at 15:38
  • Better attach a screen shot. Actually, problems for started months back. My guess is that not many websites use that button and that few will have multiple languages on the same page. – Collector Dec 13 '13 at 23:23
  • Can't add a screen shot because the problem went away the next day. Google obviously changed something, but I guess I'll never know what unless it breaks on my site again. – valis Dec 17 '13 at 16:18

2 Answers2

2

Not quite sure what this has to do w/ programming (if you're a developer for the site, making a browser plugin, etc.), but if I had to purpose a way that translation is being buggy I'd suggest these things:

  1. Check that elements on the website's page are properly identified. No dead links, misroutings, wrongful JavaScript element calls, wrongful CSS element declarations, etc.
  2. Check that the Google Translate API is set up correctly. If everything is working fine on Google Translate itself, everything should be fine w/ the core API.
T145
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  • While I thank you for your time formulating the answer, it's too general and not helpful. Yes, I'm a developer for the site. The exact same code did function well before. Google likely have changed something and screwed it up. I'm unable, unfortunately, to meddle with their code. – Collector Dec 18 '13 at 20:21
2

The solution may be found in one of the suggestions on that topic's fourth page, first post:

I support option 1 ("Translate" icon for each individual post). I think it will be very convenient -

1/ Usually you are interested in a translation of only a few posts out of every page at most anyway. There is no need to translate the whole page.

2/ It will be possible to translate different posts in different languages in the same page.

3/ No need to scroll up the page to click "Translate"

4/ Will be able to see original text

What I'm believing is that, due to the nature of your fora, the translator assumes that an individual post is one language and will try to back-translate it to the user's preferred. What happens is actually evident in the (current) translator for the first post.

I would like to inform you that in the box no longer works the translator. Let me know if you too have experienced the inconvenience. thanks

becomes

I would like to Inform You That in the box no longer works the translator. Let me know if you too have experienced the inconvenience. thanks

with an appended ,[lang code] at the end of the post.

By the way, you can see the picture's problem here despite the rest being in English and a post in Spanish. I'm assuming the translator is thinking every post is in Spanish (or whatever language it is) and it decides to spit garbage when it doesn't know how to translate to the preferred language.

As much as I love having multiple languages in a single post or even a forum topic, a machine translation cannot tell the difference between "A" language and "A" language despite being the same and being tagged as (in the example) Italian, Spanish, or what have you. This is an error in Google Translate, known as "recursive translation", and may not be fixed for a while.

So, what I recommend is this:

  1. Ask your users to preferably write in one language. This is for the sake of the machine translation so that the poster doesn't confuse it.
  2. Add a dedicated translate button to each post. Not only will this speed up times, it will be way more convenient as outlined by the poster, and avoid any errors not tagged with their respective [lang tag].

  3. Unless this is not implemented (and I believe it is), it would be best to have your own tagging system so Google Translate will know the difference between "A" and "B" languages. In addition to this, you can also mess around with the site's code so that {some foreign language}[lang code] will be wrapped around the text. For example:

    {Vorrei comunicare che nella casella posta non funziona più il traduttore. Fatemi saper se avete anche voi riscontrato l'inconveniente. Grazie}[it]

    {Paulo}[dnt]

totlmstr
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  • Thank you for trying to answer but you've added me zero new information by repeating my suggested workaround in the forum itself. Had the translator simply misinterpreted the language, it shouldn't have produced these results. – Collector Dec 24 '13 at 04:47
  • Is it possible that the translator is reading the title of the forum topic and assuming that the rest of the posts are the same language as well? In the second link, the title was in Spanish, so it may have assumed all the posts are in Spanish as well...oh crap, I used the other link. Will relink now. – totlmstr Dec 24 '13 at 05:35
  • Whichever language it assumes, it shouldn't blank out the original. If you'd look carefully, you'd see it would translate different languages on the same page without a problem. The problem is only trying to translate from/to the same language. So English->English creates a blank text. This used to work before Google changed sth on their script. – Collector Dec 24 '13 at 12:24