New multi-lingual capabilities for the forum

[Brian]

Now that forum appears to have been migrated/upgraded successfully, I'd like to make our members for whom English is not their first language aware of some new features in the forum:

• Thread (topic) translation via babelfish
• Ability to change the interface into a number of new languages

You will notice at the bottom of each thread (you'll need to scroll all the way down) a drop-down box offering to translate all listed post in a thread from English into a number of different languages. If you choose to do so, you will be re-directed to Babelfish which will translate the page on-the-fly. I've select a number of languages that I know are the native languages of visitors that we've had, either by simply reading your profiles, or inspecting and resolving IP addresses. Apologies if not all languages are listed, but we're a bit confined by what Babelfish has to offer. If you'd like another language offered, please mail me and let me know. I'll see what we can do.

Also, you can change your user interface into a number of languages from the user control panel "edit options" section, again all the way at the bottom once in the user panel. We were very limited in what languages we could offer there, as these are translations of static text throughout the site. This will not translate any of the post for you, but will make almost all the text from the system side display in your native language. Ironically, the option to translate threads will not show up in anything other than English, as it is something that I added in personally and not the developer.

My hope is to provide the best experience possible to all of our friends from around the globe. Apologies in advance in your native language is not featured, but we had a very limited framework in which to build the new system. Enjoy and let me know should you have any questions.

[dick benbow]

I think this has been needed for a long time and i think it will encourage more participation and understanding. Now if we could just get some of our readers
to try it out......

[swordfish]

Hi Brian, I used my Japanese & Chinese language translator to visit their respective web-site got no problem. I tried out your 'Thread Translation' but could not translate successfully into either Japanese or Chinese characters. I'm using Windows XP Home,Japanese language translator already come with the Windows & Chinese translator is NJStar Communicator. Any other software I need?

SF

[Brian]

Hi SF,

You will probably just want to change your text encoding from your browser to "Unicode UTF-8". Not sure why, but Babelfish seem to do multi-byte encoding in unicode instead of native format.

I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope for the Asian languages for accuracy, unfortunately. I've checked the Japanese translator, and it still has a ways to go. Latin and Germanic languages seem to translate pretty well though.

There may be issues if your computer is behind a NAT firewall as well. Babelfish can't receive the text properly.

rgds,

[Werner]

Hi Brian--

I've been fooling around with translators for my web-site for 3 years now. I haven't found any that don't make silly mistakes until I saw Babelfish.

Thank You,
Werner

[Bob Winkler]

Wow Brian,



What an exceptional improvement.. Now, Can this Babelfish fit in my ear??LOL>. I have tried to learn Japanese 3 times with marginal success