have you worked on language translation. are there good libraries available for the same or will i have to deal with most of the things myself.
Try this Apertium it's still active and can translate between multiple languages.
You can also check Wikipedia for more info and diverse resources here .
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I have several projects I've worked on that are setup for internationalization.
From the programming perspective, I have everything pretty much setup and put all of the string into an xml file or properties file. I wish to get these files translated into other languages, such as: Italian (it), Spanish (es), Germany (de), Brazillian Portugese (pt-br), Chinese Simplified (zh-cn), Chinese Traditional (zh-tw), Japanese (ja), Russian (ru), Hugarian (hu), Polish (pl), and French (fr).
I've considered using services like google translate, however I feel that this automatic translation tools are still a bit weak.
In summsary, I'm curious on if others have used professional translation services for their programs, if so which ones would people recommend and how did you coordinate the translation updates with the translation teams? Any idea on what I should expect to pay? Or is there a better way of doing this that I'm not aware of?
Machine translation services like Google, Bing etc. are not a good choice. As you mention, these services are in reality still in their infancy, and more importantly using them will most likely give your non-English customers a bad impression of your application.
If you want top quality translation, you will need to employ the services of a professional translation agency. Translators need to understand your application in order to translate the text correctly, so providing them with the application itself or screen captures of the English product will help.
You will pay per word - the rates vary from agency to agency, and also from language to language.
The other alternative is using crowd-sourced translations, from GetLocalization for example.
To summarize, proper localization is not just a matter of translating the text - you need to build a relationship with your translators, and ensure they understand your application and the context of the strings that they are translating, otherwise you will end up with a linguistically poor application, that will reflect badly on your company.
Just wondering how users translate their software, I've just finished making my software able to use different language but I'm not sure that Google translate is accurate enough.
No; I wouldn't recommend it.
Machine translators will not handle short domain-specific strings very well.
Your UI is likely to have non-standard words or usages that the translator will choke on or mistranslate.
Also, machine translations tend to look very unprofessional.
I don't think Google Translate would be sufficient, I would recommend to get a collaborator that knows your language and the language that you want to translate to.
Google translate might work for lists of words but will make a mess of sentences and make your software look really bad. Better to hire or talk nicely to a native speaker to get your sentences translated.
I am creating a multilingual site that will need to support at minimum five different languages, including Korean and Chinese. The site language is ColdFusion, so Java is the native language. I want to make the site as easy as possible for the next programmer to update, and for third-party translators to use tools that will work easier for them than digging through a SQL database.
So far I have come across Resource Bundles, GNU's GetText, and TMX.
Which do you recommend and why?
Resource Bundles are my preferred choice. I have found they are kind to future programmers, self documenting in many ways, and, make it easy to manage subcontracting the translators. They have kept things simple, reduced my technology stack and have yet to fail me.
Good luck with your project, and, thank you for making life easier for the next developer. I wish more people thought like you.
comparing rb & TMX is an apples to oranges comparison. rb & getText are sort of the same thing. TMX is a format for computer aided xlation & xfer between tools/translators.
what you seem to be overlooking is manging rb or whatever. for large i18n projects rb get big & complicated. if you have multiple translation vendors (not recommended if at all possible) it all becomes like herding cats (what's translated, in what languages, by what translator, etc.). find a management tool you like (icu4j's rbmanager is what we normally use, jason sheedy's rbman is pretty decent too) then see what it uses.
and once again (in case anybody's forgotten my "bah humbug" stance) i urge you not to use machine translators like google or bing for anything serious. people could die.
An internationalisation library for Adobe ColdFusion which uses the resource bundle package style that Adobe Flex uses.
http://resourcemanager.riaforge.org/
You may try i18n support by MVC framework like ColdBox.
Use i18N Resource Bundles for coldfusion. Paul Hastings has a great set of cfcs at: http://www.sustainablegis.com/blog/cfg11n/index.cfm?mode=cat&catid=F46401DD-50FC-543B-1F1FBE4F2BAD6B83
I'm not even sure this is entirely programming related...but here goes:
I need to translate some forms into different languages, specifically Spanish and French. Obviously, it would be good if I knew these other languages fluently, but I don't. Besides doing a Google translate, babel fish, etc. are there any resources which can assist in this? Mainly I am trying to find out what the translation of OK and Cancel are.
Moreover, I looked to find some programs which have the UI written in these other languages and all I could find were language learning programs.
How do other programmers handle doing this?
Take a look at the Pootle Terminology project:
http://pootle.locamotion.org/projects/terminology/
and Microsoft's UI translations:
http://www.microsoft.com/Language/en-US/Translations.aspx
Both provide translations for common UI terminology in a range of languages.
If you want to do it right, it seems like you need to hire a person to translate for you. Preferably a native speaker. I'm sure you can find some services through a quick google search.
The best resource for this is probably a translator who speaks the language in question fluently and has experience translating user interfaces.
Here's just one example of a company that provides this service:
http://www.ricintl.com/software-localization-services.htm
For spanish is ok to user: "Ok and "Cancelar"
I was wondering if anybody could give me ballpark figures for translating resx files. Let's say I have 10 Resx files with each about 10K words. What would be the cost to translate those from English to Spanish (or English to German)?
For the details, we are using Infragistics controls in our application. IG does not provide their software and controls in any other language than English (another reason not to use them... but that's a long story). The way they require to do localizable strings is a pain at best and we are looking at an approach that would be a bit more automated. The side effect is that we would have all strings resources localizable. One of the argument against that is the additional effort for 3rd parties that deliver our systems in a different language appears more significant. We are trying to weigh the pros and cons of either approach. (The other approach is to manually identify which strings do need to be localized and to manually create the code that allows that).
Regards,
Eric.
A ballpark would be .10~.20 USD per word.
You need to be careful when translating resx files, especially if translatable and do-not-translate content is mixed together. There are tools like Alchemy Catalyst and Lingobit Localizer that can help you and your translators manage these resources better.
For example, in Catalyst, a developer could go through each resx file and lock certain strings to protect them from the translator.
As far as pricing is concerned: http://www.proz.com is a excellent translators forum. It's probably the best place to start with.