

Ask HN: Is it even worth it to have automated translations on your site? - mcrittenden

What I mean is, if the options are to either:<p>1) spend time putting a system on your site that will translate it into another language using Google Translate or
2) ignore translation altogether and just deliver an English site<p>...is it even worth it to do #1? Or are non-native English people already accustomed to running English sites through something like Google Translate, in which case me baking that into my site doesn't really add any value?<p>Note that providing a manual, human-made translation (i.e. The Right Way) is not an option here, hence this question.
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devmonk
Just putting a feature on the site that links over to the Google Translate
version really isn't worth the time, since it clutters up the page, and those
translations aren't very good. However, despite you saying it isn't an option,
if you actually serve good translations through the site that are crawled,
that may draw more visitors.

If it is a saas app and you want it to be used internationally though, I say
go for it and use google translate to attempt to translate labels, etc. that
you use. Provide a feedback area so that people can tell you if the
translation is bad, if they feed like it. But be aware that there is much more
to i18n and i10n than translation (legal, other gov't issues, cultural issues,
timezone, character set issues in page and DB, layout differences).

