Technology Inside

Breaking language barriers, this is the slogan promoting project Transposh. As its inventor, Ofer Wald says: ” We aim to create a set of tools and platform which will enable all the information to be accessible to anyone and break the language barriers, this won't happen over night but we will contribute to it”.

One of the best plugin for the Wordpress platform, capable to turn an ordinary website into a complete multilingual portal, with a language selection interface engaging and intuitive.

The main features of the Transposh plugin are :

• Support for any language, including the reading direction from right to left
• Interface selection to choose the languages to display or translate, with choice of language of origin (default language)
• Possibility of collaborative translation (you can assign privileges to translate the text to any kind of WordPress user
• Selection of widget aspect of various kinds, to place the translation interface on the website
• Translation of external plugins and all the menu structure and text of the website
• Automatic translation of all content, including posts comments
• Precise control of all elements of a translation
• Automatic replacement of a translated text, in all occurrences of the same text
• Ease of editing for the layout and functionality of the translation interface
• SEO of translated pages, with URL extension specific for different languages
• Safety and speed of operation, translated pages are loaded without delay compared to the original language

The control interface is very complete, rich of features, all useful and well described. I suggest to always use a machine translation system (for example the one offered by Google is good) to have a rough version of the translation.

During the first translation is shown a “progress bar” indicating the completion of automatic translation. Authorized users can check a box to start the translation in manual editing mode.

During editing the text is subdivided into blocks, marked with colored symbols that can be clicked. The color of these symbols shows the status of translation. When you click a text block, is opened a window overlay that displays the language of origin and destination. After completing the translation you click OK, and go to the next block.

This method of translation is extremely productive, because is never lost the whole sight allowing to translate with great precision the various blocks of text.

Of course you can leave in automatic mode, the languages for which translation is not available “by human”. In any case is guaranteed a basic readability for our content. I assure you that is exciting to see the menu of Technology Inside, translated into Japanese!

Transposh is one of the tools that help to increase access and the popularity of a website, as shown by the graphs of access of many companies. Of course, even this blog uses Transposh, in customized version.

An added value for this plugin is the assistance offered by its inventor. I always had answers to my questions and I appreciate the professionalism and enthusiasm of Ofer Wald, to which I asked to give an interview, describing his work and himself.

d: What is Ofer Wald doing on the Earth? Where does he live, what does he like?

A: I am a father of two very lovely children. Living in Petah Tikva, Israel. I like spending time on the net, reading and surfing. And I like to think: I am able to create something from nothing :)

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d: How the Transposh plugin was born? Why is called Transposh?

A: Transposh was born from a website I created a few years ago, called Islands Phonecards Database (now is named Colnect and is growing nicely). At that time it was an hobby for me, while I worked to another startup I created. One of the things that catched on nicely was a small feature I created which enabled users to translate the site interface to their languages. When I thought of things to do after that company I figured that there's a need for that and it really helps. From this grew a company called TikFish, renamed Transposh by my wife. If you want to know more about this name, have a look to this video.

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d: How much does it cost the Transposh plugin? How many downloads of the plugin have been made to date?

A: Transposh plugin is free, totally, and probably will always remain open source and freeware. about 6200 downloads and a few hundred Web sites that actively use it, these are the numbers of Transposh.

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d: Strengths and weaknesses of the current version. To do for future versions.

A: There are very few flaws in the current version of the plugin, we want the translation process is simple and we have solved many cases in which some sentence fragments created problems. Future plans include a backup system for translations and many other services, such operation without a database.

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d: How works the plugin?

A: The heart of the plugin is visible to all, those with programming experience can easily understand the operation ;) but as a general description, let me explain. Once the webpage has been generated, a parser breaks it to small fragments and replaces them with the appropriate translation, taken from a local database. The rest is details (many small details).

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d: On which Blogs is currently installed Transposh plugin ?

A: Many, many, a Google search of the term Transposh is more comprehensive than a thousand responses. We plan to create a directory with all websites that use Transposh. One notable Blog that used Transposh is the official blog of Nokia Ovi Store.

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d: Compatibility with Wordpress versions .

A: The latest versions are always the best choice, to 2.8.5 the plugin works perfectly.

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d: Are you planning to implement a version of the plugin for Joomla or other blogging platforms?

A: Yes, we also put some code for that on our SVN, however, our resources are limited and focus on functionality rather than the coverage on different platforms. In any case, if someone wants to contribute is welcomed.

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d: If you were not an ICT specialist, what job would you have done?

A: I would probably be building stuff, so anything from a carpenter to a rocket engineer :)

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d: Technology, how can change the life of a man? Can modify and increase the deepness of his way of thinking?

A: Technology does change lives for better and worse, does it increase ones deepness of thought? If forced to answer, I'd probably say no.

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d: Are religious?

A: Never

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d: Everyone talks about the crisis… and you?

A: I do not talk of a crisis, I think there is always an opportunity. The consumer society has made people crazy and lose the sense of things, and it will happen again, no matter how hard I wish it won't..

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d: For Ofer the glass is half full or half empty?

A: For me is actually both, starting a company means you have to look at the full part, but I do tend to look at the darker sides as well.

CONCLUSIONS

If you want to address to the world your Blog, if you have a multi-language e-commerce portal, if you look for a professional tool to translate texts of the Web, Transposh is the right plugin for you.

Thanks to Ofer Wald for the nice interview, I remember the direct link to download the plugin.