The Tower Of Babble Comes Down Slowly - One Brick At A Time

I installed the Google auto translator - using a custom front end, which I helped develop - on this blog, 5 years ago.

I installed it originally because of the February 2008 Kaspersky problem with Blogger blogs - and hastily, because of the magnitude of the problem. I knew, at the time, that the Google auto translator was not 100% accurate.

No auto translator will ever be 100% accurate. Every language in the world is always developing, as society and technology develops. There will always be nuances in every language, which are not yet detected by any one person - or by any one computer.

That said, I think that it's obvious to many people, that auto translation is a legitimate feature on the Internet.

If you've read this far, and you're using the translator to read this in a non English language, my thanks to you.

I think that the Internet in general, and Blogger blogs - and translated Blogger blogs in particular, are going to do a lot to bring the various cultures and nations of the world closer together. Being a native of the USA, I speak only English with any degree of fluency. I have, at one time, attempted both French and Spanish, as secondary languages - but this is neither the time nor place for me to discuss my experiences in France and in Panama.

I would never attempt to publish this blog, manually, in either French or Spanish - and certainly not any of the other 300+ languages which are present in the world. Since this blog has some value to Blogger blog owners and readers in general - and hopefully to some non English Blogger blog owners and readers - I think that using this blog, translated into other languages, has some value also.

If you are reading this blog in a non English language - or if you know of specific phrases or words which are not translated, successfully, by the Google translator - you are invited to suggest any appropriate improvement to Google. Translate the phrase or word in question, using the Google Translate web page - and select "Rate translation" in the lower right corner of the translation result window.

If you publish a blog in a non English language, and you don't have an auto translator gadget on your blog, I hope that you will soon add such a feature. I'll even invite you to look at Cumulus In Your Language, and see if the offered non English selections are useful to you.

Just don't dismiss auto translation, because it's not currently 100% accurate. Use it - or don't use it - on any web page where it's useful, right now. But don't dismiss it, with prejudice.

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Blogs, Written In Non Roman Character Languages, Have Trouble With Publishing Static Pages

We're seeing a few reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, from owners of blogs which publish in languages that don't use Roman characters, about problems publishing static pages in their blogs. Supposedly, with the affected blogs containing multiple static pages, the pages are all being published with the same URL.

The problem is thought to involve blogs published using the New Blogger GUI. Hopefully, by switching back to the Classic Blogger GUI, the problem can be worked around, until Blogger Engineering can diagnose and fix the problem.

We have a Rollup Discussion in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, where we are asking for details, from owners of blogs affected.

1. What is the URL of your blog?
2. In what language is the blog published?
3. Are you using the New Blogger GUI?
4. If you switch back to the Classic GUI, does that resolve your problem?
5. In what city / province / country do you live?

Please answer as best you are able, to improve chances of Blogger Engineering finding and fixing the problem, as promptly as possible.

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The World Wide Blogger Culture, And Date Formatting Under The New GUI

Since Blogger took the next step with The New Blogger GUI a few months ago, and made it The Default Blogger GUI, complaints about the New GUI have been numerous, and impassioned. One complaint, seen occasionally, mentions the date / time setting wizard, in the Post Editor "Post settings" Schedule.

In the new blogger interface, it is very hard to backdate content. You have to use the calendar GUI, you can't just type a date it. I have content going back 13 years, do you know how hard it is to click the left-arrow on the calendar 144 times to get to the proper date??? It's a nightmare!

This is one person who needs a more flexible date setting wizard, in The New GUI.

In criticising the new date setting wizard, we need to understand the reasons for the design. I don't think that Blogger designed the new wizard, and removed the ability to just type the date, simply because they wanted the new wizard to look shiny.

Since Blogger gave us the ability to compose posts now, and have them published some time in the future, there have been problems with scheduled posts not publishing properly. Both posts published too early, and posts never published, have been the source of many complaints. The reason for many of these complaints were not obvious, however.

When Blogger offered us the scheduled posts option in 2008, they made the ability to schedule posts quite simple. Unfortunately, they did not observe that the entire world does not type the date in the same way. Many scheduling problems were caused by people who did not enter the date properly.

Now that more people are using The New Blogger GUI, and the new date setting wizard, we are seeing significantly less complaints about posts not publishing at the right time (or at all). A large part of the reduction of such complaints, I believe, is due to the design of the new date setting wizard, which does not allow typing of the date - but forces you to explicitly select the month and year by sequential selection - and eliminates the ambiguity.

Unfortunately, this ignores the needs of people who wish to back date (or forward date) by large time spans. So, Blogger needs to make the date setting wizard just a bit more flexible.

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