Getting Google Translate plugin Corrections and Suggestions to work

Question

I've added the Google Translate widget "Website Translator plugin" to my website. Translations works fine, but I'm not able to add corrections, nor can suggestions be made from the interface. Added corrections does not seem to apply, and while the select tooltips shows up, clicking the submit button gives an Javascript error.

Removing the associated google-translate-customization-meta tag makes it possible to send in suggestions, but these suggestions does not show up in the Translator Manager interface. What am I doing wrong? Is this feature no longer supported?

Minerva

Just a possibility, but clear your cookies (or at least ones related.) Clear your browsers cache and then try. – Witticism

Thanks, but I already tried in different browsers, in incognito mode etc. – Minerva

Sorry. answer retracted. You could use the code provided in the link as a starting point to a programmatic implementation of translate. And I'm certain you could do what you'd like through this approach. I will look into specific details later. balakumarp.com/customizing-google-translator – Britannia

Answer 1

I have the exact same issue:

• Contributions kick off a JS error
• Furthermore, on Safari for Mac, I get a cross domain error when submitting the contributions.
• Removing the META tag lets users submit but they don't show up in my Translation Manager. I believe these contributions are entered into Google's global TM (translation memory) instead.

I scoured the web for a solution to no avail. I am not sure what to do but I did find a solution - it's not great but it's my only recourse at the moment:

Use Google Translator Toolkit: https://translate.google.com/toolkit

• Once you log in to the Toolkit interface, go to Tools on the left side and you should see "Translation Memories".
• Click on that, and you should see the website that you added in the Translation Manager.
• This indicates that you can use the toolkit to add custom translations to your site's TM (translation memory).

So, to submit translations:

• click "Active" under "Translations" on the left side.
• Then, click the big red "UPLOAD" button.
• On the next screen, click on "Add content to translate" and select one of the options. For testing, you can simply choose "Input Text". Once you get the hang of this you can use "URL" to translate whole web pages.
• Choose the languages you want to make suggestions/corrections to.
• Important: next, under Pick a translation memory, select your site's TM. The Glossary should be useful too if you are using that.
• Click Next.
• On the next screen, click "No thanks" (I'll translate myself or invite friends for help.) I believe the idea here is you can pay someone to do it for you.
• You will now be returned to the main Toolkit page

Now you can perform your translation corrections/suggestions:

• In the Active Translations screen, click the translation document you just created.
• This opens the text up in a Google Doc in translation mode, where you can see the translation and correct/change it.
• After you're done, click on Complete on the upper right.

You're actually done at this point. It may take several minutes for the changes to take place. I found it took about 5 minutes. If you go to one of your web pages with the phrase you corrected, you should see your corrected text.

To verify:

• Hopefully you will see the changes on your (translated) site
• From Translation Toolkit, you can go to Tools->Translation Memories->(your website TM) then go to Search tab to search for submitted corrections in your TM
• You can also go to your Google Translation control panel now, and click on Corrections, and see them there as well.

At the end of the day, this may actually be a better way to work on translations. I'm not sure yet.

I hope this helps.

Rand

Hi spingary, I have no idea how you managed to find all of this out, but it is very helpful. Enjoy the bounty! – Minerva

Does this method still work? Or has it been deactivated since the March 2015 changes? – Nightstick

@simon, I'm not sure if this method still works because we have decided to replace Google Translate with Microsoft Bing Translations due to Google no longer supporting many of the features we rely on (see Dan's note below). Good luck! – Rand

Answer 2

I was having the same issue and it has recently appeared that Google are removing this feature from March 16th 2015, evidenced in the attached screenshot. This will be why we're seeing these unsupported issues with it.

Unfortunately they don't seem to have handled the features removal very gracefully and have wasted a few peoples time, including my own >:[

Huambo