Translation Service for WordPress Authors

Yesterday while translating my latest plugin I built a nice little app for myself to auto translate the plugin / theme. For example after your base .po file is made, you can take that file and run it through the app and all the strings will be automatically translated using Google Translate and the resulting .po and .mo files are created and then saved locally.

Is this something other plugin / theme devs would be interested in? I would not be running the service for free as Google recently made the move to a paid API for translate (2 million characters for $20 I think it is) but could release it as an app to run locally.

I translated my plugin to 8 other languages in about 10 mins yesterday so the time benefit is clearly a plus, not only that but it saves you a lot of copy paste in poEdit

Yeah sounds good…

That’s pretty awesome dude.

Google translate is not very accurate. Its cheap but you cannot trust it, imho!

But a rough translation can be much better than no translation at all.

mordauk said
But a rough translation can be much better than no translation at all.

My thoughts exactly!

Most of the people who have localization on TF and CC use Google for translation already (unless there are some highly multilingual authors out there perfectly translating 8+ languages) so I will start packaging for release

How do you plan to release it? A hosted service perhaps?

I really hope people don’t start using Google translate to mass produce translation files because we’ll end up with a lot of very poorly translated items. If you are serious about offering ready made translations spend the money and get it done by someone who can actually speak the language. You don’t have to use a professional translation service. Ask friends, family, students or other authors and buyers here on the forums.

EugeneO said
I really hope people don’t start using Google translate to mass produce translation files because we’ll end up with a lot of very poorly translated items. If you are serious about offering ready made translations spend the money and get it done by someone who can actually speak the language. You don’t have to use a professional translation service. Ask friends, family, students or other authors and buyers here on the forums.

I think it all depends on the complexity. For a plugin options panel or theme framework I think most people would be fine. From the feedback I have gotten on a few plugins in the past I have not had any problems really. It’s got to be pretty spot on, the reason they are charging for it now is because a lot has changed since v1 of the api

mordauk said
How do you plan to release it? A hosted service perhaps?

I have been deciding since I came up with the idea yesterday how it should be done. This could become heavily used so APIs keys are very important here.

I thought about doing a hosted service as I thought it would be more efficient if things in the code needed to be changed people would not have to wait for roll outs. The only issue is if people are paying for their API keys would they trust it being entered on the site? I personally would have no problem considering you can easily create a new key from your Google Admin panel but I feel like most devs would not be comfortable.

For some feedback, which of these options would you choose:

1 – Hosted service, simply create an account and tie an API you have created to it and then you can translate away.

2 – I thought this would be the best as it would mean instant use – User comes to the page and the form to translate is right there. They upload their base .po file, tick which languages they want to export to, enter their api key, and hit go. API key would not be stored at all, users would not have to make accounts, and it would be always on.

2 – Bundle you can download and then install locally or on a server for private use and download the occasional update to?