Anyone tried using translation widgets with WebHelp?

[Simon Dismore]

I saw Tim's note saying H&M 7 isn't being translated to German and that got me thinking about the future of machine translation.

Has anyone tried integrating Google Translate or Microsoft Translator services with WebHelp output? I'd be interested to hear any lessons learned.

[Tim Green]

Hi Simon,

These services are useful for understanding a little more than nothing. However, you wouldn't want to use them for something like this. Quite apart from the dangerous errors they would make, references to the user interface would be impossible because it is highly unlikely that they would ever call anything by the name used in the user interface.

Apart from all that the entertainment value can be quite high, particularly if you enjoy Dadaist poetry...

[Simon Dismore]

Heh, I like your line about Dadaist poetry.

I'm not convinced about the broader issue though. Yes, the first public offerings of most technologies look a bit rubbish, but that doesn't mean we ignore them forever. I wouldn't like people to operate a nuclear plant using machine-translated documentation. But compared with normal writing, most WebHelp is relatively simple in structure ("To do X: First, Aaa; Then, Bbb; Finally Ccc.") and repetitive. And if you expect non-native English speakers to use English documentation, you must write in a Simple English style anyway, which should be an ideal starting point for machine translation.

As for the user interface, if it has been translated, you'll already have the base terminology glossary. If the UI is still in English I think you just tag the terms either "translate=no" or class=notranslate. That could be a quick way of test-marketing an app in secondary markets before deciding to invest in UI translation. Also, if your application relates to a specific industry or process, there may well be existing free or paid translation memories. You can upload your glossaries and memories to Google Translator Toolkit and to Microsoft Translator, so they are used as hints. The Microsoft hub even offers a feedback system so end-users can help.

Machine-translated WebHelp doesn't look entirely stupid IMO. I'm simply asking whether anyone here has tried it?

[mcselec]

old post. i also like to include google gizmo to translate the webhelp. but it does not work when i provide the index.html
only when i provide the direct link to the page it works. and pretty good i think. good enough to be usable.
so i wonder how to change the index.html so it works for the complete generated help?
i am surprised that there are almost none questions about this
i know h&m can be translated but it is a lot of work to maintain. so i think google translate is a good alternative.

[Tim Green]

Google Translate is no longer the best option. DeepL, the machine translation integrated in Help+Manual 9 and the Help+Manual Translation Assistant for bulk translation of entire projects, is the best option around by many orders of magnitude. However, that being said, running the Help+Manual documentation through a machine translation system is only part of the work that would be involved. Most of the references to the program interface would be wrong, and you would have to go through that line by line to correct it before it would be of any use to you.

[mcselec]

while great when HM can use deepl (i did not checked the latest version) it does have some problems :
- it requires translation updates each time i modify the help
- you need someone with native language to check the result of the translation or it will look like a chinese manual
- it makes me responsible for the quality of the translation

when i use google gizmo it means the user can select this to view the page in the language of his choice. he will know that it is not perfect.
and i do not need to update anything. so for some scenarios google and comparable are way better.

[Tim Green]

Hi McSelec,

while great when HM can use deepl (i did not checked the latest version) it does have some problems :

Those are actually all benefits of translating like that, particularly the fact that you are responsible for the quality of the translation, which is as it should be. Even so, we are looking into the possibility of adding support for live translation services to WebHelp skins in future updates. I can't give you any timeline on this at the moment, but it is on the ToDo list.

PS: Is the Shift key on your keyboard broken?

[mcselec]

Shift works but i was in message mode
Each advantage has its disadvantage. I understand that as a sales man you recommend this.
I had software translated in many languages. It is hard to maintain that. And when users see a manual in their language they also expect support in their language. Now that might work for companies that charge a lot of $ for their software and updates but we don't.
So our support is just in a few languages. With AI i think a translation can become real good. But till that time i try to get things done with the means i have.

That said : I asked a question but it was not answered.
But i will sort it out. Thanks anyway. Your software is excellent and working all those years without problem. When time permits i will check out a new version to see what has changed.

[Tim Green]

That said : I asked a question but it was not answered.

I think your question was:

so i wonder how to change the index.html so it works for the complete generated help?

That's not really a question that can be answered, at least not without a huge amount of additional information. We would need to know exactly how the translation tool you are using works, what its API is, what access there is to it, what kind of encoding and structures and files it expects and much much more. It would be a very large project.