Ask HN: Best way to programmatically translate strings?

1 pointindicud1 comment

I'm very unfamiliar with this area. What's the best way to programmatically translate strings from English to, let's say, Norwegian? By 'best way', I'm specifically interested in accuracy.

View on HN

The best way is to get the text professionally translated. You can use the gettext utilities and library to switch languages based on locale, or look them up from a database. I use gettext on a few websites to extract text strings, send them for translation in .po format (find a translator who can use POEdit), then display the translations on locale/language switch.

You can use the Google Translate API to do it on the fly but accuracy may suffer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com