Translate your blog using the Google Translator Widget

Here's a useful tool for those of you who would like the ability to translate your blog into other languages: the Google Translator Widget. If you take a look in my right sidebar you'll see that I've implemented this as a sidebar widget.

This widget is really easy to use: simply visit the Google Translator Widget page and choose the option you would like to use for your blog. There are three options available:

• Just the widget code, which features written links to translate into different languages.


• The widget with big flags, which features large flags instead of text links


• The widget with small flags (as I have featured in the right sidebar).

Once you've chosen the format, click on the appropriate link and you will be taken to a page which features the HTML code required for the widget to display. For (new) Blogger Layouts templates, highlight all of this code (CTRL+A) and copy it to your clipboard. Next, open your Blogger dashboard and choose to add a new HTML/Javascript widget to your sidebar. Paste all of the code in the widget and click "save". Now when you take a look at your blog, you can see the translation wodget in action and test it to your heart's content!

For Classic Blogger templates (non-layouts), copy the code and insert this as a complete block of code where you would like it to be displayed in your template. You should be able to preview the adjustments before saving to ensure you have placed it correctly in your blog.

So far the widget seems to work well: the posts on the main page and on post pages are all fully translated. On the down side, the layout of my blog seems to "break" when translated meaning that the sidebars and main column feature underneath each other rather than being aligned together as they should. Also, the text within the widgets in my sidebars is not fully translated, and ads are not displayed.

Still, the positives seem to outweigh the negatives, and I'm glad that readers can translate my posts into their native languages in order to understand them better.

Technorati Tags: translation | widgets | languages | sidebar