Automatic Translation of Forums and Private Messages (phpBB)

On all pages of our forum and private messages system, there now is a translation button. Click it to get an automated translation of the entire page you see.



Colnect is available is 58 languages. Translations on Colnect are maintained by volunteers. They do a fantastic job but they cannot translate our forums and your private message. The automated translations will not be as good as the manual ones but they should be good enough to help you understand simple messages.

NOTE: Mistakes do happen with automatic translation. Use simple sentences and try to repeat the meaning of what you want more than once. This will help ensure that the meaning of what you wanted is understood.

So no, we're not building a new Tower of Babel but we're now making it much easier for you to communicate with collectors from all around the world. It's now easier to make friends in more countries with Colnect.

This integration has been done directly in our phpBB forum system and the same concept can easily be applied to forums all around the Internet who would like to use it. If you run such a forum, we'll be happy to help you implement this addition.

Wishing you happy collecting :)

Internationalizing the site

colnect.com is available in 25 languages:
English | العربية | Български | 汉字 | Hrvatski | Česky | Nederlands | Suomi | Français | Deutsch | Ελληνικά | עברית | Magyar | Italiano | 우리말 | Polski | Português BR | Português PT | Română | Русский | Slovenščina | Español | Svenska | ภาษาไทย | Türkçe |

Personally, I can communicate well in only 3 languages, fake some conversation in a few more and use some phrases to amuse an audience in a party. That still doesn't amount to 25 languages with their different scripts.

How was this done? The answer is simple: when your users love your project and enjoy its services, the nicer ones are keen to help when asked nicely.

The technology behind translations is quite straight-forward although different approaches exist. The important thing is to provide the translators with an easy interface they can understand. Handing out a text file full of expressions needing translations is a bad call for two reasons: it's boring for the translators and the translations may be out of context.

On the side of this post you can see the way translators (collectors) on colnect.com - Islands Phonecards Database are helping out. As they use the site, small "translate" icons appear next to expressions that haven't been translated yet. Clicking one such icon pops out a window that allows submitting the translation. When translated, the "translate" icon is gone. It can later be restored to correct the translation - that's why you see so many of them in the picture attached.

There are most issues about creating a multi-lingual collectors website but I prefer to keep my posts short.