HACKER Q&A
📣 gethly

How do you handle small translations?


In case you are running a multilingual website, how are you handling occasional need to translate few sentences into multiple languages?

I have invested a chunk of my time and money to support 9(as of now) languages for the web UI, but as times goes on and new features and changes are being made, I sometimes have a need to add new text here or there. Usually nothing long, 2,3,4.. sentences. A word here and there.

It makes no sense to bother individual translators with such a miniscule job. Agencies are insanely expensive(from my experience 4x of a price of an individual translator) and so I have resorted to basic google translate, which is unfortunately stuck in 2010 and does not produce good results.

I have not found any "fiver" alternative for this situation, so I am wondering if people are doing anything differently?

  👤 solardev Accepted Answer ✓
Use chatgpt or deepl. They're much better than Google Translate, especially if you specify the context.
👤 isntThatSth
> It makes no sense to bother individual translators with such a miniscule job

You're not bothering them if you're paying for the job. On your part, all you need to do is to set up a web-based interface that makes it easy and fast for them to log in and add the translations.

👤 isntThatSth
Machine-created translations are bad. They've become better over time, but they're still bad. If you've ever tried having your native language butchered in the way that machine-created translations butcher my native language on the daily, you'd understand why. I suspect a lot of the push for machine translations comes from monolingual developers in Silicon Valley.