Giant Political Mouse: Blogging in Both Official Languages

Friday, August 25, 2006

Blogging in Both Official Languages

I would love to be able to speak/type French and thus reach a broader audience.

However, linguistics are not exactly my strong suit.

Programming and code editing are my strong suit(s)

As well as stealing and modifying good ideas.

So - as a prototype - I bring you blogging in both of Canada's official languages.

If people like this I will work on making modular code that others can add to their blogs.

Here is the code that you see on my side bar:

<div style="border: 1px solid #cccccc; background-color: white; width: 100px; text-align: center; padding: 0 0 10px 0;"><p style="margin: 0"><br /><div style="clear: both;"></div><form action="http://www.google.com/translate"><span style=""> Translate this Blog</span><input dir="ltr" value="http://giantpoliticalmouse.blogspot.com/index.html" name="u" size="55" type="hidden"> <span style="">from </span><br/><select name="langpair"><option value="en|fr">English to French<option value="fr|en">French to English</select><input value="en" name="hl" type="hidden"><input value="UTF8" name="ie" type="hidden"><input value="Translate" type="submit"></form><br /><a href="http://giantpoliticalmouse.blogspot.com/2006/08/blogging-in-both-official-languages.html">Get this code for your blog</a></div>

You have to change value="http://giantpoliticalmouse.blogspot.com/index.html"
to the url for your own blog

Saskboy says this code works on wordpress:

<div style="border: 1px solid #cccccc; background-color: white; width: 100px; text-align: center; padding: 0 0 10px 0;"><p style="margin: 0"><br /><br /></div><div style="border: 0px solid #cccccc; background-color: white; width: 180px; height: 100px; text-align: center; padding: 0 0 5px 0;"><p style="margin: 0"><br /><form action="http://mail.yahoo.com/config/login?/http://www.google.com/translate"><span style=""> Translate from</span><input dir="ltr" value="http://www.abandonedstuff.com" name="u" size="55" type="hidden"> <br/><select name="langpair"><option value="en|fr">English <span onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">au</span> <span onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)" class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">francais</span><option value="fr|en">French to English</select><input value="en" name="hl" type="hidden"><br /><input value="UTF8" name="ie" type="hidden"><input value="Translate" type="submit"></form><br /><a href="http://mail.yahoo.com/config/login?/http://giantpoliticalmouse.blogspot.com/2006/08/blogging-in-both-official-languages.html">Get this code too</a></div><br />

11 comments:

Northern BC Dipper said...: Wow, is this ever cool!

It looks good, to me, with my limited French, but I'd wonder what a Francophone would think of this? After all, if you translate it into French and then back into English, you will get some rather interesting results.

I know that the Blogging Dippers are trying to get a French Version going, maybe they would be interested in this?

Do you mind if I mess around with this code a little? I think this could be useful on my sidebar.; 11:21 PM
Saskboy said...: This could produce fantasticly drole results. Bon job. What is the translation engine, and will you make the code avaiable for all Canadian bloggers to insert a button onto the page?; 11:25 PM
lance said...: With respect to the previous commenters, quality is _not_ the point.

Inclusion is.

Damned fine idea.

I'll be cough, stealing, cough, the code. :)

Cheers,
lance; 2:57 AM
Saskboy said...: Lance I agree quality of translation isn't the issue. I'm just saying it will be funny/cause issues. But inclusion is more important, and I for one welcome my French speaking overlor... err, welcome a translation of my site :-); 10:50 AM
Giant Political Mouse said...: The code is free for all ot use

thanks guys; 11:20 AM
Saskboy said...: It's great GP Mouse.
BTW, Why don't you accept anonymouse comments on your blog, don't you like trolls? ;-)

I've made minor changes to the code for my Word Press Sidebar. I'm not sure if I have bad code elsewhere interfering, but it was showing up at the bottom of my Sidebar with a long Div starting at the top when I put it there, until I removed a couple extra spans, and put in a height.

If I post changes blogger will block the html code. I'll email it.; 12:43 PM
lance said...: The orignal works fine at my place. (Minus design changes.)

One thing though, Google's recreation doesn't like my CSS pre class="" tags.

Cheers,
lance; 8:36 AM
Ross said...: great idea, i believe i will be sniping this code from you as well, but first. how would i go about adding an english to spanish option because i have several friends in mexico and through them get quite a few hits from mexico.; 10:14 PM
Saskboy said...: Ross, my guess is that you'd replace the "fr" in the code with "es" but that's a wild guess you could play with before you get a more sure answer. Then replace French with Spanish in the code too. Or you may just need to copy a line, then change things if you want Spanish in addition to french.; 10:20 PM
Giant Political Mouse said...: Ross:

add the following code as an option:

(option value="en|es")English to Spanish(/option)

replace () with <>; 10:48 PM
Ross said...: thank you for the help, ive got it up and running on my blog complete with a spanish option.; 5:32 PM