WEB CONTENT TRANSLATION
Google Translate offer
If a user is in a country where he/she loads a web page from a country with a different language to that of his/her country, then Google may offer the option to translate the displayed page to the language of his/her country.For example, if a user in the UK loads the web page of the Russian railway museum, then Google offers the option to translate this page only, or all future pages, into Russian. The converse is also true for a user in Russia accessing a museum in the UK.
For a single page:
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| 1. If in the UK then click the "English" option on the right hand side of the page. | 2. If in Russia then click the "Russian" option on the right hand side of the page. |
Alternatively, to translate all such future pages, simply click the check box labelled "Always translate Russian" or "Always translate English" as appropriate.
How to translate web content
The process is currently (June, 2024) as follows, for the web browser “Google Chrome”:
How to translate a web page
Load "Google Translate" by entering Google Translate into your web browser. "Google Translate" should then load up.
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| 1. Click the "English option" on the left hand side of the page. | 2. Click the desired language option on the right hand side of the page. |
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| 3. Select the desired text from the given web page. | 4. Copy and paste the selected text to the left hand box of the Google Translate page. The translated text should now appear in the right hand box of the Google Translate page. |
| 5. If it is desired to keep the translation, then open the application of choice (Word, Excel ..) , then select the text in the right hand box and paste to your application.
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How to translate an Eastern Star document
Save the document to your local device Load up the Eastern Star page from the link “Eastern Star Newsletters”.
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| 1. Click on the issue required (EasternStar062.pdf for this example). The identified issue will then load to the user device. | 2. Click on the "download file" icon at the top right of the page. |
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| 3. Click on the folder, on the left hand side of the screen, to which you wish to save the issue ("Downloads" for this example). | 4. Click "Save" to try and save the file to your device. If says "insecure download blocked" then click the option "Keep" (you may rest assured that there is nothing untoward about our copies of Eastern Star!) |
| 5. The file will then be downloaded to your chosen folder. | |
Translate the local copy of the document
Load "Google Translate" by entering Google Translate into your web browser. "Google Translate" should then load up.
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| 1. Click on the link labelled "Documents" then set "Detect language" to "English" (left hand side of the page). |
2. Click the desired language option on the right hand side of the page. Then click "Browse your files". |
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| 3. Click on the folder, on the left hand side of the screen, to which you have previously saved the isse ("Downloads" in this example). Select the filename by clicking on its icon ("EasternStar062.pdf)" | 4. This filename is then reflected at the left hand bottom of the page |
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| 5. Click the button "Open" on the bottom right hand side of the screen. | 6. Click the button labelled "Translate". |
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| 7. Wait while it is translating (it says this while so doing). | 8. When it has finished, click the button labelled "Download translation". |
The file will then be downloaded to your chosen folder as identified in the download of the English version. The file should have the same name as before, but appended by a " (1)" before the file type suffix. For example, EasternStar062.pdf becomes EasternStar062 (1).pdf.
Note that the appearance of the translated text may not be great. If you only want a small amount of text from the document, then it may be better to copy and paste that text and proceed as for a web page as given above.
Be aware!
The English language
The ambiguity of the English language can make things very hard for an automated translator to understand what is being meant. Occasionally something will be translated wrongly and sometimes in an amusing manner. For example, a “fireman” to the emergency services is someone who puts out a fire, whereas "fireman" to a steam locomotive crew is the person who lights a fire and keeps it going! Equally a “turntable” is a device for turning round a locomotive, and not that for a record player. A more amusing translation is when a"“tender locomotive", i.e. a locomotive with a tender for wood, coal or oil, can be translated as a "loving locomotive", the word "loving" having two different meanings in English (and is even pronounced the same way).
Some words, however, are very easy to translate. For example, in the context of a steam locomotive, the words "regulator", "injector", "reverser" become "регулятор", "инжектор", "реверс" (Russian), "regulator", "injector", "inversor" (Romanian),and "regulators", "inžektors", "reversors" (Latvian).
As Artificial Intelligence progresses, one may expect that translations will become more accurate in the future.
Dual Language Support Many websites in Eastern Europe and elsewhere support more than one language. Selection of a language is typically made by clicking on the relevant national flag at the top right hand corner of the web page, or by a text box from which the appropriate language may be chosen.
Such translation often relates only to the text and not to the photographs or images on the given page. The reason for this anomaly is that the author of the given page did not take the trouble to provide the translated images.
The translation itself can come in one of two ways, namely:
- Online translation through Google Translate or whatever, which only does the text on the page.
- Website provision of duplicate pages, one set for each supported language. This is the preferred approach since the translated pages can be verified by a native language speaker who can check the spelling, grammar and sentence construction. Hopefully the author of such pages will also provide translations for the images in those pages :-) .