I have a couple of web pages that make extensive use of abbreviations, and they wreak havoc on Google Translate, especially if the abbreviation happens to be a word in English -- for example, the abbreviation "HI" for Hawaii. I've littered my pages with [span class="notranslate"] tags, but what I'd really like to do is provide a hint for GT, so that HI would remain as HI in English, but be translated as if spelled out in full. What I'm thinking is something like this:
Honolulu, <span class="notranslate" alt="Hawaii">HI</span> or Honolulu, <span class="notranslate" x-google-trans="en|Hawaii">HI</ span> or something like that. In this construction, the "alt" text would be explicitly specified to be translated in place of the original, leaving, for example: en: Honolulu, HI zh: 檀香山，夏威夷 instead of zh: 檀香山，HI or zh: 檀香山，喜 "夏威夷" is "Hawaii"; "喜" is apparently an attempt at phonetic rendering of "Hi," but it means something like "delight." Testing "Honolulu, HI" on translate.google.com, there are some languages that leave it as "HI" (French, Spanish, Dutch, Hebrew, Bulgarian, etc.) others that correctly translate it as "Hawaii" (Russian, Belarusian, Japanese), some that transliterate it phonetically (Chinese/simp. & trad., Serbian), and others that translate the word "Hi" as in "Hello" (Korean, Arabic, German, Persian). Of course, there are also several non-Latin-alphabet languages that leave it untouched (Hindi, Greek, Armenian, Georgian, Thai). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "General" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-translate-general?hl=en.
