We had the Google Translate widget on the Met's site, in just the visit
section, for a while during my time there, and then we added it to a
part of NYPL's site but I never managed to get it added to the whole
site and actually lost my job there because I wouldn't shut up about it.
True story! (I've had LOTS of other jobs since then, don't worry.)
Anyway, the problem with human translation is this: you're already
pretty careful to get the English right, and probably a few people are
involved in the production and editing of any given page. Some or all of
them may actually be trained & experienced as professional editors in
English, and the educators/curators/content owners probably speak and
write English pretty fluently, perhaps even well. Basically, you spend a
lot of time getting the words right. How are you going to meet that
standard in even one other language? You're going to hire some outside
person who may or may not be good--it's hard to tell because none of you
are professionals in that language--and not edit it nearly as carefully
as the English because who's qualified to do that? And then it's so much
extra work, when you change the English a little bit, you'll probably
either just change the other languages in-house, with whatever local
speakers of that language you can find, or maybe put it off for now
since it really wasn't that big a change anyway. Over time you'll know
that the translations are kind of falling behind the primary pages, but
it'll be OK because everyone else is paying less attention to them than
you are, so it'll just become this thing that eats at you a little bit,
but you take comfort knowing that at least it's better than having no
translations at all.
In case it's not obvious, if you're Canadian substitute "French and
English" for "English," and if you're Belgian or Moroccan or whatever,
substitute the four or six languages you're a pro at. However many it
is, it's not 100 and it's probably not even eight or nine.
The problem with machine translation is exactly what Susan points out.
It has issues. Even when it's pretty good it's not very good at
technical terms, or colloquialisms, or proper names, or a dozen other
kinds of repeated issues. And your art or history or science museum
website is going to be about 30% those things. Probably 50% at the
Exploratorium.
Here's the thing: even with all those issues, it still helps. If you
think of machine translation just as an aid to comprehension, and you
think of adding the widget to your site as a convenience, just to make
it easier for visitors to do something they can already do and you can't
stop them anyway, why not? Well I mean, that's what I thought and I lost
my job. But I still think it's a logical argument. And I haven't seen a
whole lot of museum websites succeed at human translation in more than a
couple languages, except on very limited sets of pages.
There have been a couple major museum websites that provided the Google
translation widget on every page, as a convenience. The two that I
recall having it in the past no longer seem to provide it, so I have to
imagine they similarly had a champion for it who moved on (willingly, I
hope!) and their successors were less interested in fighting that fight.
Anyway, here's my suggestion: try Google on a few of your pages in any
languages for which you have a local fluent speaker/reader and see how
well it works. I bet you'll find that it conveys the basic ideas
reasonably well, that it makes some really boneheaded mistakes, and that
about 100 out of 100 visitors will not be harmed by it. But I also bet
that if you share it with your colleagues from marketing,
communications, etc., you'll quickly get a sense of how politically
difficult it may be to roll it out. Exploratorium seems like the kind of
place that might be willing to try it ... but wow, I bet your stuff is
hard for machines to translate, so who knows.
Best,
Matt
On 10/22/2018 08:40 PM, Susan Edwards wrote:
Hi Mark -
I managed the localization work for the Getty's Visit section 4 years ago
and can give you some tips. From an accessibility point of view, you want
to have human-translated language, not use Google. In general translation
services are ok, but they make mistakes. You also want to think about
non-English language search engines and SEO in other languages as well. So
localization is not just about translation. Feel free to contact me - I am
happy to talk on the phone to discuss.
Things have probably changed in the last 4 years - I do wonder if Google
translate services, which are much more accessible these days through
search, are more commonly accessed and used by users. But ideally a user
from China, for example, isn't coming to your English pages and then
clicking on a button to change the language. They shouldn't see your
English page at all, and should just be sent directly to the Chinese page.
Again, this requires search optimization in that language, as well as
language declaration on the pages.
Susan
Susan Edwards
Associate Director, Digital Content
HAMMER MUSEUM
10899 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90024
310-209-7921
[email protected]
On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 5:04 PM Megan Richardson <
[email protected]> wrote:
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam offers its whole website in Dutch and
English, and key visit information in 9 other languages.
Megan Richardson
Directrice, Musée virtuel du Canada
Musée canadien de l'histoire
Director, Virtual Museum of Canada
Canadian Museum of History
100 rue Laurier Street, Gatineau QC K1A 0M8
T 819-776-7189
-----Original Message-----
From: mcn-l [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mark Andrews
Sent: October-10-18 5:23 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [MCN-L] Multilingual websites
Hi. I'm wondering if anyone has any recommendations about language
translation for museum websites. Currently, the Exploratorium has a series
of single pages for visit planning for seven non-English languages (e.g.,
https://www.exploratorium.edu/es). But as we try to attract and serve
more non-English speakers, we're thinking about other approaches.
For instance, for anyone who is using (or has used) a Google Translate
widget in your universal footer or header, did you find it successful? Did
it get good usage?
It occurred to me that I don't really have a sense of -- broadly -- how
people use foreign language websites. Are they translating at browser level
(or device level), making a site-specific widget superfluous? Or is a
widget actually useful?
Any insights or stats are appreciated! - Mark
--
Mark Andrews | Director of Online Media
e x p l O r a t o r i u m
[email protected]
mobile: 415-830-1578
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