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Copyright © 2002-2003 by SYSTRAN
| Abstract |
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SYSTRANLinks is a turnkey Machine Translation solution that transforms standard
websites and content applications into interactive multilingual hubs, all
within seconds. With SYSTRANLinks, your website is translated on-the-fly. Your
visitors browse through it in their native language with one click. Just manage
your website in one language; SYSTRANLinks automatically updates its
translations.
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SYSTRANLinks is a client-server Translation solution, hosted by SYSTRAN. Just
paste a translation button on your website to make it multilingual.
SYSTRANLinks supports both static and dynamic Web pages (ASP, JSP, PHP, Lotus
Notes, Cold Fusion, CGI...). It can also translate password-protected and
form-generated Web pages. The use of cookies is also supported by SYSTRANLinks.
This is how SYSTRANLinks works:
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A visitor goes to your website and clicks on the "Translate to" link.
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The browser sends a request to the SYSTRANLinks server.
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SYSTRANLinks fetches the original Web page from your webserver.
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SYSTRANLinks translates the Web page.
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SYSTRANLinks modifies the HTML Web page to enable fluid navigation.
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The Web page is sent back to the client browser.
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The visitor clicks on a link and the corresponding Web page is automatically
translated (see Fluid navigation).
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Each translated Web page counts as one translation request.
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SYSTRANLinks is highly customizable using the online interface at
http://www.systranlinks.com/:
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Customizable translation links: choose among
the predefined translation links (button, flags...) and paste the corresponding
HTML to your website, or design your own.
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Customizable translation:
translation accuracy is enhanced by using terminology adapted to your website.
SYSTRANLinks offers 20 ready-to-use specialized dictionaries and an Online
Dictionary Manager that allows you to add new expressions and sequences not to
be translated (ex: trademarks).
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Add new languages and upgrade your SYSTRANLinks
at anytime.
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Images cannot be automatically translated, but SYSTRANLinks offers the
possibility to replace original images with manually
localized images during the translation process. Like images,
Macromedia Flash animations cannot be translated. Javascript-generated text
cannot be translated, as it is actually Javascript code. The SYSTRAN engine
cannot separate the text strings (which will be read by the end-user) from the
program code. This most frequently occurs with Javascript-generated navigation
menus. For more information, refer to: Javascript
localization.
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The registration and management of SYSTRANLinks websites is done by using the
online interface available at http://www.systranlinks.com/.
To use this interface, you need to sign up to
get a SYSTRAN eServices account. This will allow you to get a Free Trial to
test SYSTRANLinks on your website. If you already have a
SYSTRANet account, please sign in using the same authentication
information. If you have forgotten your password you can use the "Password
lookup" feature at http://www.systranlinks.com/.
To be able to use SYSTRANLinks to translate your website, you need to sign in
at http://www.systranlinks.com/.
If you never have registered a website, you will automatically reach the "New
website" page. Otherwise use the "Website" menu and click on "New". You will be
asked to provide the following information:
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The main URL of your website: it is the part of the URL that is common to all
the Web pages of your website. If you registered http://www.yourdomain.com/
, SYSTRANLinks will accept to translate all URL beginning with http://www.yourdomain.com/
such as http://www.yourdomain.com/dir/file.html
or http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html
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The language of your website: the language in which your website currently
exists, that is the language from which you will translate
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The SYSTRANLinks solution: we recommend that you take advantage of our Free
Trial to test SYSTRANLinks. For advanced features and/or specific questions
please contact our Sales Department
If several websites have been registered, you
need to "Open" a website in order to view and update its properties. Use the
"Website" menu and select the "Open" item. If a website has not been opened you
will automatically reach the "Open a website" page when trying to use the other
elements of the "Website" menu.
Once a website has been opened, the "Website
properties" page can be opened by using the "Website" menu and selecting the
"Properties" item. This page sums up the properties of your SYSTRANLinks
website. The "General information" section contains the following items:
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Website: the main URL of your website you gave during the
registration.
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Aliases: the main URL of other websites that should be considered as part of
your website. This allows you to group several websites and manage them as a
whole. It is especially useful if your website uses several domain names.
Aliases are added by SYSTRAN to your account upon request, depending on your
SYSTRANLinks solution.
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Solution: the type of SYSTRANLinks you chose. You can upgrade to any other
SYSTRANLinks solution at anytime by changing the value of the drop-down menu.
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Activation date: the date when you registered your website. The date is written
in ISO format which is YYYY-MM-DD.
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Expiration date: your SYSTRANLinks solution is active until this date, written
in ISO format which is YYYY-MM-DD. You can extend your solution by clicking on
the "Renew" icon, or remove an expired website by clicking on the "Delete"
icon.
The "Language pairs" section allows you to choose the languages into which
SYSTRANLinks will translate your website. You can also change the source
language of your website if you made a mistake during the registration process.
The list of disabled languages pairs appears on the left, and the list of
enabled ones appears on the right. The maximum number of languages pairs you
are allowed to enable depends on your SYSTRANLinks solution and is indicated on
the page. All exceeding language pairs will be automatically removed by
SYSTRANLinks upon validation.
You will get detailed information on how to modify your website to add
SYSTRANLinks translation links by selecting "HTML links" in the "Website" menu.
You first need to indicate the URL of the Web page that will have to be
translated when your visitors will click on the translation links. Then click
on "OK". SYSTRANLinks will update the instructions on the page and offer 3
possibilities:
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Translation preview: SYSTRANLinks will generate a Web page with flags so that
you can test SYSTRANLinks without modifying your website.
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Ready-to-use translation links: you just need to copy and paste the HTML code
of one of the SYSTRAN-designed translation links to make your site multilingual
in just a few moments.
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Design your own translation links: for each language that you chose on the
"Website properties" page, you will have the exact instructions on how
to design the translation link adapted to your website look and feel.
SYSTRANLinks will generate a Web page with flags so that you can test
SYSTRANLinks without modifying your website. Just select "Translation preview"
in the "Website" menu. The default page can be modified by using
"HTML links".
Translation accuracy is enhanced by using terminology adapted to your website.
SYSTRANLinks offers 21 ready-to-use subject-specific dictionaries and an
online Dictionary Manager that allows you to add new expressions and
sequences not to be translated (ex: trademarks, company and product names...).
The "Translation customization" page allows you to activate dictionaries in
order to customize your translation and adapt the translation to your specific
terminology. When multiple dictionaries are selected, prioritize the
dictionaries with the first selection being counted as most important. You can
choose between SYSTRAN dictionaries and your own user dictionaries, created by
using the Dictionary Manager. The list of disabled dictionaries appears on the
left, and the list of enabled dictionaries appears on the right.
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Activating too many dictionaries will only reduce performance and will not
improve translation accuracy. You need to choose carefully the dictionaries
adapted to your terminology and/or build your own user dictionary.
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The "User Dictionary test mode" can be used to highlight Not Found Words (NFW)
in bold red, and User Dictionary Entries in bold green.
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User Dictionary test mode should not be permanently activated but only when you
are working on your translation customization and when you wish to see the
coverage of your user dictionaries and which entries are missing.
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SYSTRANLinks offers fluid navigation. Fluid navigation is the process of
transparently modifying the translated Web page so that the hypertext links
will be automatically translated. Image maps, forms and Javascript are also
supported.
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Standard fluid navigation (SYSTRANLinks Bronze, Silver and Free Trial) modifies
links belonging to your website only. These are the links beginning with your
website main URL or one of its aliases.
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Full fluid navigation (SYSTRANLinks Gold) modifies both links to your website
and links to other websites. In the latter situation SYSTRANLinks will
systematically detect the source language of the Web page and will translate it
only if the corresponding language pair exists. Otherwise it will return the
original Web page.
Fluid navigation is an automatic process that usually needs no website
modifications, except for some very specific situations: to
disable it for some specific HTML sections, or to handle
Javascript.
Fluid navigation relies on rewriting the translated HTML content. Therefore
SYSTRANLinks needs to be able to identify the links, which is done
automatically for common HTML content.
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However there is no generic means to identify links in Javascript code. But
SYSTRANLinks is able to support Javascript-generated links with
minor modifications of your Javascript code.
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Links contained in external proprietary documents such as Macromedia Flash
animations cannot be parsed and will not benefit from fluid navigation.
SYSTRANLinks knows how to rewrite links in ordinary a
href tags to enable fluid navigation but it does need
some help to rewrite links generated by Javascript functions. Indeed, there is
no generic way to identify where in Javascript code variables or strings that
are URLs are used.
To achieve this, it is necessary to use the systranURL Javascript
function. This is a wrapper that enables SYSTRANLinks to identify and rewrite
URLs that are not directly in a href
tags but which are generated by Javascript functions. It must be added in each
page in the head
section of the HTML (not as included as a .js
file).
<script LANGUAGE="Javascript">
function systranURL(url) {
return url;
}
</script>
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Then, when any function calls a URL, the URL has to be encapsulated by the
function systranURL().
Example 1. Simple HTML file using the systranURL wrapper
<html>
<head>
<title>SYSTRAN URL</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type "content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<script language="Javascript">
function systranURL(url) {
return url;
}
function openNewWindow(URLtoOpen, windowName, windowFeatures) {
newWindow = window.open(systranURL(URLtoOpen),
windowName,windowFeatures);
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<a href=javascript:openNewWindow('http://www.example.com',
'ExampleWindow','height=400,width=400,toolbar=no,
scrollbars=yes')>pop-up</a>
</body>
</html>
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The default behavior is to rewrite all links and forms present in an HTML page,
provided that they belong to your website or one of its aliases (except for
Gold solutions which have full fluid navigation).
If you do not want some links and/or forms to be redirected, just add the systran="no"
attribute in your HTML <a>
<form> and <area>
tags.
Example 2. In this case SYSTRANLinks will
not redirect the link to SYSTRANLinks server.
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<a href="page.html">My link</a>
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should be written on your webserver as
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<a href="page.html" systran="no">My link</a>
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However if you have a lot of links, it can become impractical to add this
attribute. If you want to prevent the rewriting of a whole section of HTML, it
must be placed between some special HTML comments: <!--
begin_dnr --> and <!--
end_dnr --> (as in "Do Not Rewrite").
Example 3. Here all links will not be rewritten
<!-- begin_dnr -->
<a href="page1.html">Link1</a>
<a href="page1.html">Link2</a>
<a href="page1.html">Link3</a>
<form action="cgi">...</form>
<p>...</p>
<!-- end_dnr -->
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Which is exactly the same thing as:
<a href="page1.html" systran="no">Link1</a>
<a href="page1.html" systran="no">Link2</a>
<a href="page1.html" systran="no">Link3</a>
<form action="cgi" systran="no">...</form>
<p>...</p>
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SYSTRANLinks allows you to prevent whole HTML blocks of a Web page from being
translated by placing them between <!--
DNT --> and <!--
/DNT --> (as in Do Not Translate).
DNT blocks are meant to be used for some specific HTML blocks, such as
addresses on "Contact us" Web pages, list of publications, legal disclaimers
and legal notices. However DNT blocks are not meant to be used in order to
prevent expressions or words such as company names, trademarks, proper nouns
from being translated. For these you should create a user dictionary using the
online Dictionary Manager and
customize your translation with it.
Example 4. DNT block declaration
<!-- DNT -->
This text should not be translated.
<!-- /DNT -->
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Obviously SYSTRANLinks cannot translate images. However you might want to
localize your images, store the localized versions on your website and have the
translated pages use these localized versions instead of the original ones. The
images will look "as if" they had been translated.
To localize an image, you should add the attribute systran="yes"
in your HTML tags. These can be <img>
, <body> , <td>
, <tr> , <table>
(for both images and background images).
An image named image.jpg
will be rewritten as image-lg.jpg
where lg is the ISO639
two-letter code for the target language (the same that is used in your
translation links).
Example 5. English to Japanese localization
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<img src="menu.jpg" systran="yes">
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Will be rewritten as
If you have a lot of images to localize, you can use the following HTML
comments to avoid adding the systran="yes"
attribute in all your HTML tags.
To rewrite all <img>
tags, include the relevant HTML section between <!--
begin_img_translation --> and <!--
end_img_translation --> .
To rewrite all <body>, <td>,
<tr>, <table> tags, include the relevant HTML
section between <!-- begin_bg_translation
--> and <!--
end_bg_translation --> .
To rewrite all <img>, <body>,
<td>, <tr>, <table> tags, include the
relevant HTML section between <!--
begin_allimg_translation --> and <!--
end_allimg_translation --> .
Javascript-generated text cannot be translated, since it is part of Javascript
code. The SYSTRAN engine cannot separate the text strings (which will be read
by the end-user) from the program code. The most frequent situation is the use
of Javascript-generated navigation menus. However you might want to localize
your images, store the localized versions on your website and have the
translated pages use these localized versions instead of the original ones. The
Javascript texts will look "as if" they had been translated.
To localize an image, you should add the attribute systran="yes"
in your <script>
tag.
A script named script.js
will be rewritten as script-lg.js
where lg is the ISO639
two-letter code for the target language (the same that is used in your
translation links).
Example 6. English to French localization
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<script src="menu.js" systran="yes">
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Will be rewritten as
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<script src="menu-fr.js">
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SYSTRANLinks' translation relies on proper word and sentence boundaries. The
first recommendation is to respect the standard punctuation and typographic
rules. Punctuation is very important, especially for long sentences. Obviously
it is also the first means used by SYSTRANLinks to find sentence boundaries and
define linguistic compounds within a sentence.
Sentence and word boundaries also rely on the HTML markup. Some ways of using
HTML tags can result in incorrect sentence analyses, thereby resulting in
incorrect translations. Here is a list of common mistakes. They are often
related to improperly using HTML tags for some visual effects.
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A word should never be divided by HTML tags.
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A sentence should not be divided into two separate parts using tags such as <br>
or <td> which
are regarded as sentence boundary markers.
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Do not use whitespaces to separate different sentences or titles. For example
the different elements of a text menu should not be separated by whitespaces.
Tables without any border are often a convenient way of achieving exactly the
same result, by preserving the visual aspect and by allowing SYSTRANLinks to
analyze properly the content.
Data form reverse translation is part of SYSTRANLinks' advanced features. Once
you have made your site multilingual with SYSTRANLinks, your visitors will
naturally fill in your data forms (for example "Contact us" forms) in their
native language. Data form reverse translation offers you the ability to have
SYSTRANLinks automatically translate these forms (completely or only some of
the fields) back into your website source language.
To enable data form reverse translation you need to add some additional hidden
information to your forms, information that will only be used by SYSTRANLinks.
Specifically, you must indicate which fields should be translated, and how.
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Put the comma-separated list of field names to be translated in the hidden
field SYSTRAN-S if you
want to get both the original user data and its translation (recommended).
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Put the comma-separated list of field names to be translated in the hidden
field SYSTRAN-T if you
want to get only the translation. However SYSTRAN recommends that you get both
original user data and the translation.
Example 7. HTML form that takes advantage of SYSTRANLinks data form reverse
translation
We will assume that the following form is part of an English page that gets
translated into French by SYSTRANLinks.
<form action="http://www.yourwebsite.com/form.cgi"
method="POST">
<input type="hidden" name="SYSTRAN-S" value="field1, field2">
Name <input type="text" name="name" size="20"><br>
Address <textarea name="address"></textarea>
Subject <input type="text" size="50" name="field1">
Description <textarea name="field2"></textarea>
</form>
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If a French visitor fills in this form in French, your website will receive the
content of field1 and field2
in both English and French. But name
and address will
not be translated.
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