I am really happy to announce that starting today, Matt Hillman joins Atelier Convivialité on a part-time basis. He will work on developing Web Translate It product’s awareness.

Matt is british and moved two years ago from London to the west coast of Sweden. Prior to that, Matt used to play drums in a band and was working for the music team at Last.fm and later on for the marketing team at Record Union.

I am really glad to have Matt onboard. Welcome, Matt!

Two weeks ago I soft-launched the french version of Web Translate It, you can visit at webtranslateit.com/fr.

While working on it, I remembered a nifty technique used to propose a localised version of a website to the user. I really like this technique and I thought I should share it here.

There are usually two different techniques to serve a localized version of your service to your users.

IP sniffing

The first is a redirection based on IP sniffing, used notably by Google. I don’t really like this solution, because if you browse google.com from Japan, you will get the website in Japanese, which is not so great if you don’t know any Japanese.

It breaks the assumption that one URL equals one website, and not different sites depending on where you are, but it also makes the service unusable to people travelling abroad.

Web browser sniffing

A better solution is browser sniffing. It is about reading a list of preferred languages from the headers sent by the web browser.

Many services use this to redirect you to their available localised services. This is a really good solution, used notably by Facebook.

There is just one downside, though: it is a bit too magical for the end-user. Nobody knows about this browser language preference and many people think this automatic redirection is a bug. Most users don’t understand why a such redirection happens.

Sniff and propose, but don’t impose

So I rediscovered ⁽¹⁾ another technique using browser sniffing to propose the user a localised version. I think this is the right way to go and it won’t pester anyone.

If a French user browse Web Translate It in English, she will see a clickable ribbon in the corner saying “Hey! Web Translate It is also available in French!” in French.

When the user clicks the ribbon, it sends her to the French version of Web Translate It.

Now this is what a user with browser settings set to something else than French will see when browsing the french version of Web Translate It:

This is easily extendable. If a russian version was available and a russian user browse the French site, a russian ribbon would propose her to browse the russian website.

I am really happy with this solution, and it is also a bit simpler to implement than the other solutions. Sure, it is one extra step to the user, but it is a step that makes people actually understand what is going on. One more click, much less confusion.

---

[1] The first and only time I saw it was when Last.fm launched its international sites. When browsing Last.fm with a French web-browser, a frame saying “Your browser speaks French. Do you?” was appearing. As far as I remember, it was really much appreciated by the users. ↩

Search is the second most used feature on Web Translate It, after the translation interface itself, and until today, it was rather cumbersome.

Simple Search

I introduced a new way of searching for strings on Web Translate It: Simple Search. This is the default way of searching, and it is really efficient and easy to use.

To search, just type something in the search box displayed on all project pages: it can be text or a key. The search engine with search for strings in the current language (instead of in all languages like previously), and display them right in the translation interface, ready to be translated, edited or proofread.

If you are used to search with the previous system, you will notice it is so much more convenient that before. You basically do the same thing with 3 times less clicks. You will save a lot of time.

Advanced search

There is now a second way to search for a string: Advanced Search, for more advanced users. Click on the little cog brings you to the Advanced Search page.

There, you can do a very precise search queries with many criterias: in which language you want to search, what you are looking for (anything, key, text and developer comment).

This is great way to search for strings on a large project. On top of that you can also use advanced search queries to find more precisely what you are looking for.

I hope you will enjoy this improvement, thank you for using Web Translate It!

I am really excited to announce a really nice update to Web Translate It’s plans, and I am reasonably sure everyone will appreciate it.

One common remark made to the current price grid is that there is a huge gap between the Free plan and the Medium plan starting at 39€ a month for 2,000 strings. Also, 39€ per month is quite a lot of money for starting businesses, especially when converted into dollars (that’s currently $53).

I thought I should try to do something about that.

Introducing the Small plan

I just added a new plan: Small. Small is affordable: it costs 14€ per month (that’s just $19) and can hold up to 1,500 strings. It’s a great deal as it has almost the same capacity that used to offer the Medium plan at 39€ per month.

Small is a great plan at a fantastic price tailored for start-ups working a middle-sized application.

Increased capacity for all plans

The price remains unchanged for all other plans, but to mark the difference with the new Small plan I increased the string limit for all plans.

The medium plan now offers 4,000 strings instead of 2,000 and the Large plan now offers 8,000 strings instead of 6,000.

No action is required on your side in order to obtain the new capacity: if you subscribed to a Medium or Large plan, you already have it. You can check your new capacity on the “Organisation” page.

Limited Extra-Large plan

Finally, the Extra Large plan, which used to be unlimited, is now limited to 60,000 strings. That’s quite a lot. If you ever reach that limit, please get in touch with me so we can talk about a custom solution.

I am thrilled by this announcement, and a lot of work has been made under the hood to make Web Translate It more affordable.

I will have more exciting news to announce soon, so stay tuned and follow @webtranslateit on twitter, or subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed. Thank you for using Web Translate It, the web’s easiest translation tool.

I posted this teaser on Twitter yesterday:

Something cool is coming soon http://twitpic.com/13n9p4

It’s time to explain what it actually means! Github’s service hooks now include Web Translate It.

If you have an open-source project hosted on Github you want to translate, keeping your translation files in sync with your source code will be as easy as copy/pasting your API key. Github will let Web Translate It know if new translation files are available as you push new code. It can’t be easier!

For more information about this feature, please check the github integration documentation.

Thank you for using Web Translate It.