What options do you recommend for language translation on content driven Web sites?

Question

Please read the whole question. I'm not looking for an approach to managing multi-lingual content, but I'm looking for a way to actually get that multi-lingual content. This usually falls within technical recommendations on most projects I work on, and I hope someone can offer some help. We are working with a client now who has the personnel to physically translate content, and each language has a separate domain, hosting, CMS, etc. For those clients that want to do business internationally though, and have no personnel, what are some approaches or services to use? Is it cheaper to farm this out to people, or to do it dynamically, and what are the technical drawbacks? Any advice you can offer is helpful. I know this isn't strictly a programming question, but I think it falls within the technical realm.

Answer 1

I have yet to see a dynamic translation service that would be suitable for the content of a professional website. Language translation is not (yet) a mechanical activity - it requires thought and analysis. Your clients would best be served by outsourcing translation (or hiring a translator).

Answer 2

Normally you would need two teams: a forward translation and a backward translation and you do this in parallel (3-4 four teams would be good) - you then check where the backward translation are in agreement (hopefully this is at 75-85%), you then get an expert to give your recommendations on the remaining 15-25%. You could theoretically set this up in Mechanical Turk.