{"id":11894,"date":"2009-10-24T15:59:59","date_gmt":"2009-10-24T13:59:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/?p=11894"},"modified":"2009-10-24T15:59:59","modified_gmt":"2009-10-24T13:59:59","slug":"google-docs-google-translate-and-the-web-integration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/24\/google-docs-google-translate-and-the-web-integration\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Docs, Google Translate, and the Web integration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Google Docs<\/a> recently got a pretty exciting feature – integration with Google Translate<\/a>.\u00a0 But as exciting as it is, if you combine the new functionality with some bits of the previously available functionality, you can get truly mind-blowing results.<\/p>\n

Consider an example.\u00a0 You have a feedback form on your web site.\u00a0 You fanatically collect responses and study them to make your web site better.\u00a0 The problem however is that some of the questions that you ask in your feedback form are open-ended.\u00a0 Meaning that people can write whatever they want in there.\u00a0 And more often than you would like to,\u00a0 people fill those fields in their native language.\u00a0 Which might be very different from anything that you can understand.\u00a0 This forces you to guess which language was used for each response, and then translate them one by one.\u00a0 Needless to say, that takes a lot of time and effort.<\/p>\n

One of the solutions to this problem can be achieved with Google Docs<\/a>.\u00a0 For some time now, Google Docs had Form functionality, where you could built pretty much any form you needed, and then easily integrate it with your web site.<\/p>\n

If you don’t know how, go to Google Docs and select Form<\/em> from the Create New<\/em> menu.\u00a0 Using a very user-friendly wizard build the form.\u00a0 When you are done, open Form’s More Actions<\/em> menu and select Embed<\/em>.\u00a0 This will give you a pop-up window with a little HTML code snippet.\u00a0 Copy this code and paste it into your web site.<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/p>\n

Whenever someone submits your new feedback form, the results will automatically go into a special spreadsheet in your Google Docs account.\u00a0 You can see this spreadsheet by navigating to See responses menu in your Form editing screen and selecting Spreadsheet.<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/a><\/p>\n

All you need to do now is add two columns for each form field that you want to translate in this spreadsheet (I tried a single-column solution, but for some reason it didn’t work for me).\u00a0 One will keep the auto-detected language of the form field submission, and another will keep the translation of the submitted field to the language that you understand.\u00a0 Here is how you do it.<\/p>\n

First, fill out and submit the feedback form yourself.\u00a0 By doing so, you’ll make sure that the form is correct, all fields make sense, the HTML code is right, and that you are able to see the responses.\u00a0 You’ll also have some sample data in your spreadsheet which will make your life easier.<\/p>\n

Secondly, next to the column with the field value in the foreign language write a formula to guess the language.\u00a0 If your field value is in cell B2, add =DetectLanguage(B2)<\/em> to cell C2 and =GoogleTranslate(B2, C2, “en”)<\/em> to cell D2.\u00a0 Now, if you get some Russian text in B2, cell C2 wil lshow “ru” and cell D2 will show the English translation of the Russian text.<\/p>\n

The only minor issue with resulting spreadsheet is that when\u00a0 you get more submissions of your feedback form, language detection and translations are not done automatically.\u00a0 But since we used the formulas in the cells, all we need to do to get those new submissions translated is drag and drop the formulas down to the new table rows.<\/p>\n

While this is not exactly perfect, it is still a substantial improvement to the manual process used earlier.<\/p>\n

P.S.: And so just that you know, it is entirely possible and in fact very easy to publish the spreadsheet back at your web site (for example, in password-protected area for your site administrators to see).\u00a0 Every time the spreadsheet will be updated, the changes will be automatically reflected on your site as well.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n

Google Docs recently got a pretty exciting feature – integration with Google Translate.\u00a0 But as exciting as it is, if you combine the new functionality with some bits of the previously available functionality, you can get truly mind-blowing results. Consider an example.\u00a0 You have a feedback form on your web site.\u00a0 You fanatically collect responses … Continue reading Google Docs, Google Translate, and the Web integration<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,62,1334],"tags":[2072,2238],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-11894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-technology","category-web-work","tag-google-docs","tag-google-translate"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13455,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2010\/10\/07\/google-translate-tip-for-google-chrome\/","url_meta":{"origin":11894,"position":0},"title":"Google Translate tip for Google Chrome","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"October 7, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is something that I thought of today, played with, and found quite useful - integration of Google Translate with Google Chrome via the search engine configuration. \u00a0Of course, I know that there are addons for Google Chrome to integrate Google Translate. \u00a0Of course, I know that Google Chrome comes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/google_chrome_translate-500x298.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10972,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2007\/12\/12\/blogging-with-google-docs\/","url_meta":{"origin":11894,"position":1},"title":"Blogging with Google Docs","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"December 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"If, for some reason, you don't like the editor of your blogging tool (WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, etc), you have a few options to consider.\u00c2\u00a0 Those of you hosing your own blogs, can always try a plugin or two.\u00c2\u00a0 WordPress, for example, has a number of plugins which either add pieces\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11655,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/17\/web-os-yes-are-you-dense-no\/","url_meta":{"origin":11894,"position":2},"title":"Web OS? Yes. Are You Dense? No.","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"July 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I came across the post titled \"A Web OS? Are You Dense?\".\u00a0 It has a lot of sense in it, but it also asks a question that needs answering.\u00a0 And I think the answers are quite simple. So, when your Aunt asks why her 1.2GHz computer isn't fast enough to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10988,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2007\/12\/19\/simpler-google-talk-translations\/","url_meta":{"origin":11894,"position":3},"title":"Simpler Google Talk translations?","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"December 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Google has recently added Gtalk bots that can do translations to various languages, mostly available with Google Translate.\u00c2\u00a0 While I'm all for helping people understand each other better (even though there are certain complains regarding the quality of translation), I think this functionality could have implemented simpler. Disclaimer: I haven't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":23529,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2015\/02\/16\/sheetsee-js-client-side-library-for-connecting-google-spreadsheets-to-a-website\/","url_meta":{"origin":11894,"position":4},"title":"Sheetsee.js – client-side library for connecting Google Spreadsheets to a website","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"February 16, 2015","format":"link","excerpt":"Sheetsee.js is a client-side library for connecting Google Spreadsheets to a website and visualizing the information in tables, maps and charts. This is pretty neat, considering that you can already use Google Forms to collect the data from the website into the Google Spreadsheets. \u00a0Also, I think this greatly simplifies\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"sheetsee","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/sheetsee-03-500x366.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":14609,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/17\/discussions-in-google-docs\/","url_meta":{"origin":11894,"position":5},"title":"Discussions in Google Docs","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"March 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Google introduced discussions in Google Docs. \u00a0A very useful feature, no doubt. After seeing a social network implemented within Dropbox, I wonder how much time it will take to turn this feature into the next Twitter. \u00a0Or Facebook.","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/7zmOYziFKZw\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11894"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keyring_services?post=11894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}