My whole site translated in German by google

[disciple]

Hi,

I noticed the weirdest thing when checking out the blogs on our site. There was a referrer that was an IP number only. (216.239.39.104) When I clicked on it, it took me to an exact duplicate of my site, only everything was in german.

When I checked to see who this IP belonged to it turned out to be google.

What is up with this. Has anyone else noticed anything like this?

Thanks

Rick

[disciple]

This is exactly where the referrer link takes me when I click on it.

http://216.239.37.104/translate_c?hl...lr%3D%26sa%3DN

Is this simply a translation? Can I use this to my advantage to market to people in other countries? This would be really great as it also translates our online store completely as well.

Any help or opinions on this would be appreciated.

Rick

[jaldridge]

Have you not seen the Google translate tools? You can translate any site into quite a few languages, but the translation is generally not brilliant!

I wouldn't use the tool to market to other countries due to the low quality of the translations.

[rhvo]

Take another look at the URL. Someone was using the Google translator to view your site in German. That doesnt mean your page exists in German. What you saw in your stats was the referral from someone using the online translator

[Lonna]

I noticed that Google had my photos listed (without my consent), so that people could download them.

What's up with that?

[TrafficProducer]

The page is produced "on the Fly" Dynamically.

You could copy this locally and post it as a permanent page to your site if you like, (watch out for any copyright stuff)

Translation of some words by computer could be incorrect and even cause offence so take care.

Here are some more such Translation Links

[Faglork]

Originally Posted by TrafficProducer

Translation of some words by computer could be incorrect and even cause offence so take care.

As a German who sometimes uses Google translation to get a laugh:

Do not use machine-translated pages on your website. It will make you look moronic at best. Hire a translator (preferably a native speaker of that language), it is not as expensive as you may think. Do not ask the son of your neighbour who took some lessons in German (or any other language ...) at school ...

After all: If you can't get the texts right, what else will you fail in? That is the picture your visitors will get. Better get it right from start.


Greetings from Germany,
faglork

[marcel]

It's a user browsing your site. Excite can also translate your site. :)

Originally Posted by disciple

Hi,

I noticed the weirdest thing when checking out the blogs on our site. There was a referrer that was an IP number only. (216.239.39.104) When I clicked on it, it took me to an exact duplicate of my site, only everything was in german.

When I checked to see who this IP belonged to it turned out to be google.

What is up with this. Has anyone else noticed anything like this?

Thanks

Rick

[TrafficProducer]

Translation of some words by computer could be incorrect and even cause offence so take care.

One test you can use with on-line Translators is to convert into different language of choice.

Then take this and translate into the language you want. Then take this to convert it back to English to compare with the original message.

Sometime you will get a good laugh at the results.

[Chatmaster]

Originally Posted by Lonna

I noticed that Google had my photos listed (without my consent), so that people could download them.

What's up with that?

Lonna, that I would say is absolutely correct.

If you want to prevent Google from indexing your images and displaying it in their results, simply add it to a directory called images and remove it from your root directory. Then disallow SE's in your robots.txt folder from the images directory.

I suggest that you do NOT do that though if you are selling these images. Rather sign your pictures with your url, as the publicity you will get from G will be very helpfull.

[google junky]

Originally Posted by Lonna

I noticed that Google had my photos listed (without my consent), so that people could download them.

I use the CHImageGuard php script from http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive...ctimages.shtml

You are able to allow only specified domains and subdomains in the configuration. Additionally the image can be set to produce no image on the offending site or a one selected image to replace the one a person tries to use, such as a banner as a replacement. We use this on a clients e-commerce website to protect thier product pictures. We did allow images.google.com to use the images but elsewhere do not allow them. Also the url to the images is masked so the person trying to link to the image will fail miserably.

If someone sincerely wants to use your pic to show one of your products and tell others about your great site with a pic. They end up having to use the url to the page and using the product number to explain what they want the other persons in the forum to see. Ofcourse if they use the url to the page rather than the pic then this boost ibl's for that page and boosts the rank later on down the road.

Originally Posted by Chatmaster

I suggest that you do NOT do that though if you are selling these images. Rather sign your pictures with your url, as the publicity you will get from G will be very helpfull.

That was a very good point as well

[google junky]

I agree completely with the comments saying that translation tools are not as good as a real person translating for you.

I did happen to play around with PHP and make one though using googles translation and credits the translation as a page on your site and not directed from google.

http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/51817.html

[Chatmaster]

Hi Lonna

Sorry about my previous post. I didn't complete my first paragraph for some reason... What should be added to the paragraph is that you should disallow robots from your images directory in your robots.txt file.

We also investigated these translation tools, specifically for the European markets. The problem was that most of them do a word for word translation. This caused for the meaning of the sentences often becoming meaningless and even worse... insulting. I haven't investigated Google's technology though.