Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Pro Version 3 For WordPress 2.x Blogs Released

Overview

We have released Angsuman’s Translation Plugin Pro Version 3.0. This comes with several new features and enhancements, defects reported in version 2.0 has been fixed. The main thrust of this release is flexibility and configurability. We have exposed lot’s of choices to the end-user (blogger) with reasonable choices as default. This will ensure zero-configurability as before. However it now allows you to fine-tune the translator to your liking for each translated language. Please read below for the new features and where to get it.

We have started shipping the new version to all of our existing customer (free upgrade). Honk if you haven’t received your copy in the next 6 hours
This is a highly recommended upgrade.

Contents

1. New Features
2. Defects Fixed
3. How to upgrade?
4. Where to get it?

New Features

Choices, choices & choices

We have provided lots of options to customize your translation for each language. We have provided some guidelines (and some restrictions), based on our tests, in the options page. We have chosen the defaults which we think would be appropriate for you. However you can now choose based on your specific requirements of translation quality, load speed, intranet use etc. You are the boss!

Choice of translation engine

With this release now you can choose your translation engine for each language. You do not have to rely on our chosen defaults. You can evaluate and choose the best engine for each language. Currently we support Google & Babelfish translation engines. In future we can easily have plans to add more engines with this new framework.

Choice of translation modes

Normally each translation engine supports translation by two modes. You can now choose between two modes of translation per engine and per language.

The first mode is where you send the url to the engine and it returns your translated pages. This cannot be used for pages behind corporate firewall for obvious reason.

The second mode is where you send the pages data to the translation engine. It works behind firewall too. Previously it was the only mode supported for non-chinese languages. Now you get to choose.

The data mode is slightly faster. In data mode Google engine truncates AdSense ads from the translated pages.

Choice of url pre-processing

We pre-process url’s to prevent mangling by translation engines. You wouldn’t believe how much it can mangle!
Also it is required for url translation modes currently. This restriction will be removed in future.

We have now provided you with the ability to turn off url pre-processing if you so desire, per language and per engine. It too has its benefits. For example it gives better layout for certain languages in data translation mode for K2 theme when using Google engine. If you are confused, don’t worry. It has been clearly explained in your translator options panel. And then we are always there for you to solve your problems.

Multiple domain support

We can now support multiple domains in a single translator plugin. The key requirement was supporting cases where both domain.com as well as www.domain.com was used to represent the same blog. We needed to support such cases.

Note: Using multiple domains for your blog can invoke duplicate content penalty from search engines like Google. It is recommended to direct your duplicate domains to your preferred domain using .htaccess. Alternatively now you can use Google Sitemaps to specify your duplicate domains; works only for Google search engine.

Defects Fixed

404 error for nice url’s

Translator plugin was properly translating the pages on browser but was erroneously (or more accurately WordPress was) sending a 404 response code which isn’t good for search engines. This has been fixed. Now it sends the correct 200 response. This affected users who are using nice-permalinks or index.php permalinks. Thanks to MacManx for reporting this & Google ad stripping!

Better support for K2 Theme

K2 is a popular theme. However Google translation engine do not particularly like it in data method translation. Now you have two options:
1. You can use Babelfish with URL method and pre process URL enabled.
2. You can also use Google with data method and with preprocess URL disabled.
Both of them provide good translation and preserves K2 layout

Removal of Google ad’s in translated pages

Translated pages was being stripped of Google ads. This is a defect with Google translation engine in data translation mode. It affected all languages except Chinese.

You have two options:
1. You can wrap your ad code within skip translation tags (available in all versions). This ensures that your ad code is not visible to translation engines and hence they cannot mangle / delete it.

2. With version 3.0 you can select a different translation engine or translation mode to circumvent this problem. In short you can use any combination other than Google engine with data translation method.

How to upgrade

Replace the existing translator.php file with the new version. That’s it.