While messing around, I came across Google's machine language translation page http://translate.google.com/.
I know that machine language translation isn't the greatest but it
beats translating my blog into two other languages. At first, I tried
to find an API or something to make it easy but nothing as it is still
in Beta for many parts and language pairs. So I had to hack my way
around things. Here's what I found.
After taking a look at the source code, it was pretty obvious that
it was form posting several variables. The first variable on the query
string is HL. Not sure what this is but
for my language it is EN which is the two digit ISO code for English.
So I would guess that it stands for Home Language.
The next variable on the query string is LangPair.
This is obviously the language pairing telling the system to translate
from the first language to the second language with the pipe |
character between them like EN|RU for English to Russian or EN|PT for
English to Portuguese. There are many other combinations, just go to
their page and look at the source code. Also, it is helpful to know
the ISO codes.
The last variable on the query string was U for the URL to translate. It is the URL of the page that I want to translate.
Yes, I know machine language translation isn't the greatest but it
works in a pinch and is getting better all the time. I remember what
it was like about 5 years ago when they just started and their quality
is much better today. Not as good as a human translator but I know
quite a few professional translators who start with machine translation
and then modify it accordingly. Yep, the secret is out of the bag.
So if you want to do this just look at the LINKS section to the right and you will see the code:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&langpair=en|ru&u=http://www.mathomsolutions.com/blog/
Just add the appropriate HTML code around it and away you go. One
of the neat things about their translation is the popup bubbles that
they do with the original text. This helps those who are at least a
bit familiar with the language to see if the context is correct or
not.
As this is BETA from Google, it will probably change in some fashion so I would use at your own risk.