Free Website Translation: Take A Test Drive

Despite its pronounced advantages (free and instant), a free website translation tool has one BIG disadvantage, the painfully (or laughably) poor quality of translation output, that undermines its benefits.

Some developers of free website translators tell credulous businesses cock-and-bull stories about the possibility of using free online translators to market to and build trust with foreign web users. "Just put our free website translation tool on your web pages," they say, "and your visitors will be able to read your website in their native language."

What's the good of telling such stories, I wonder? They are half truth. The output free machine translation tools produce is difficult to understand. What is worse, though, is that it can be completely incomprehensible and misleading.

To get acceptable machine translation output, one has to write "for machines." That is, to write in a plain or controlled language. Post-editing by professional translators can further improve the quality of machine translation output. Moreover, if you are a legal entity and use a free website translation tool, publish appropriate disclaimers and warnings about the inaccuracies of such translation. These points are described in detail on my page devoted to web page translation.

To my mind, it's OK for personal websites to use free online translators. But if a commercial website resorts to free online translation services in the hope to get a competitive advantage with "multilingualism," I feel sorry for such websites. A poorly translated website will rather scare away than attract prospective clients.

For commercial websites, machine translation can do only in combination with human post-editing or a crowdsourcing model. Another solution may be to get professional human translation of "static" pages with important information (company info, mission, history, management, description of products and services) and let free website translation tools translate "dynamic" pages (news and other frequent updates). If a company cannot afford a professional translation service in any form, than perhaps it is not yet ready to expand beyond its national borders.

If you want to "test drive" free website translation, start from using the below free website translation tools. Enter the URL of your website into each of the boxes, choose your language pairs and press the "Translate!" button. Compare the translation results. Do you understand the translations? Are you satisfied with them?

Google Translate from English to Afrikaans from English to Albanian from English to Arabic from English to Armenian from English to Azerbaijani from English to Basque from English to Belarusian from English to Bulgarian from English to Catalan from English to Croatian from English to Czech from English to Danish from English to Dutch from English to Estonian from English to Filipino from English to Finnish from English to French from English to Galician from English to Georgian from English to German from English to Greek from English to Haitian Creole from English to Hebrew from English to Hindi from English to Hungarian from English to Icelandic from English to Indonesian from English to Irish from English to Italian from English to Japanese from English to Korean from English to Latvian from English to Lithuanian from English to Macedonian from English to Malay from English to Maltese from English to Norwegian from English to Persian from English to Polish from English to Portuguese from English to Romanian from English to Russian from English to Serbian from English to Slovak from English to Slovenian from English to Spanish from English to Swahili from English to Swedish from English to Thai from English to Turkish from English to Ukrainian from English to Urdu from English to Vietnamese from English to Welsh from English to Yiddish _________________________ from Spanish to English from Spanish to French from Spanish to German _________________________ from French to English from French to German from French to Spanish _________________________ from German to English from German to French from German to Spanish _________________________ from Italian to English from Italian to French from Italian to German _________________________ Tip: You can find much more language pairs on the Google Translate website.

FreeTranslation.com from English to Spanish from English to French from English to German from English to Italian from English to Norwegian from English to Portuguese from Spanish to English from French to English from German to English from Portuguese to English

Translation Experts Limited from Englishfrom Spanish (Latin America)from Spanish (Spain/Europe)from Frenchfrom Germanfrom Italianfrom Portuguese (Portugal)from Portuguese (Brazil)from Croatianfrom Czechfrom Danishfrom Filipinofrom Finnishfrom Greekfrom Hungarianfrom Icelandicfrom Japanese from Latin from Norwegianfrom Polishfrom Romanianfrom Russianfrom Serbianfrom Slovenianfrom Swedishfrom Turkish from Welsh to Spanish (Latin America)to Spanish (Spain/Europe)to Englishto Frenchto Germanto Italianto Portuguese (Portugal)to Portuguese (Brazil)to Croatianto Czechto Danishto Filipinoto Finnishto Greekto Hungarianto Icelandicto Japaneseto Latin to Norwegianto Polishto Romanianto Russianto Serbianto Slovenianto Swedish to Turkishto Welsh

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_____________________________________________________________________ Website owner: Irina Lychak, self-employed freelance linguist, Russian translator, Ukrainian translator, Kiev (Kyiv), Ukraine

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