Web Lite Translate

My company, Web Lite Solutions, has launched a new web site translation service to translate data-driven websites into multiple languages.

The service uses Dataface as a foundation to convert existing PHP/MySQL web sites into multilingual sites without having to change the site’s structure very much.  Theoretically any web site developed using PHP and MySQL could be converted with minimal changes.  The technology is currently being used to convert Science.ca into French, and it is used to power the http://translate.weblite.ca site itself also.

In the case of Science.ca, attempts had been made to port the site into multilingual frameworks such as Plone or Typo-3 without success.  The site had over 5 years of development invested in the current framework and changing frameworks would have been a lot of work ( = time and money).

Web Lite Translate, on the other hand, was able to cooperate with the existing architecture to seamlessly convert it into a multilingual site.

Check out Web Lite Translate at http://translate.weblite.ca

Wikipedia to Aid in translations

We all know that Wikipedia is a great tool for learning more about various topics.  I just discovered another great use for it:  aiding in website translations.

My company, Web Lite Solutions, has hired someone to translate one of its web sites into Chinese.  The question arose: "What is open-source, i.e. how should it be translated to Chinese?"

The term open-source, in the developer community, takes on a greater meaning than the sum of its parts.  It is almost a brand name.  Hence it is important to get the proper Chinese translation, and not just a translation that means, more-or-less, the same thing.

 Wikipedia to the rescue!

I Went to the Open-source listing on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source).  Then I looked on lower left column of the page where it lists the different translations for this entry, and clicked on the chinese link  (http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BC%80%E6%94%BE%E6%BA%90%E4%BB%A3%E7%A0%81).  Presumably the title of this page should be the proper Chinese translation for "Open-source".  In addition, my translator is able to learn a number of other related translations by simply reading the article.