One problem that a small software developer like myself faces is getting my software and its help content available to users that don’t speak my language. Translating something like the Paint.NET Help is a daunting task — it’s a lot of content, so it either takes a lot of time, or a lot of money.
Machine Translation (MT) gets a bad rep because it usually provides laughable, hardly usable translations. It is, however, very cost effective. So, I have added the Windows Live Translator widget to the Paint.NET Help. Hopefully it can help non-English users get the gist of the help content, while at the same time adding some more feedback into the Windows Live Translator system. Who knows, maybe someday it will be almost as good as a “real” translation 🙂
If you use this, then please send feedback via the “Is this translation useful?” link at the top of the Windows Live Translator shell.
paint.net blog 
“Machine Translation (MT) gets a bad rep because it usually provides laughable, hardly usable translations.”
Yeah, those translations are indeed laughable, almost nonsense. But they’re better than nothing, of course.
I myself have worked as a translator in various projects (including OpenOffice.org to pt-br) and I do know how difficult it is to find a good translation for certain strings sometimes, even for us humans.
Thus, these automated translation tools have a long way ahead, until they became really useful.
BTW, to you have any plans (even for a distant future) to have real translations of PDN Help in other languages?
Laughable translations indeed. In one of my forums we’ve made up a game through these translations. Basically, we get some words (like a song) translate it to Japanese then back to English. It provides some hilarious results.
Anyhoo, I didn’t even know Windows Live had a translator. I’ve always used Google Translate all this time…
You should try the Windows Live toolbar button. It’s quite popular … http://gallery.live.com/default.aspx?pl=3
“All your base are belong to us.”
“Do not want!!”
^^ This is what you’re trusting your translation to!
🙂 Just kidding. Sounds like a pretty good balance between effectiveness and comprehensibility.
Hi,
I am still confused – is it allowed to translate the english help? At the index page, there is CC but help pages are strictly copyrighted 😦
I already made translations of some parts of the Help …