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Paste Ninja Goes Multilingual

Chris Cornutt was nice enough to give Paste Ninja (the premier PHP-powered pastebin app) some exposure by highlighting it on PHPDeveloper.org a week or so ago. Thanks, Chris! As a result of the extra publicity, the site saw an increase in traffic as people came to check it out. I hope they liked what they saw... but stay tuned, because there's more features to come!

It was interesting to look through the access logs afterward. There are a lot of pastebins available on the Internet, but the feature set and usability of the application is what will help differentiate it from the rest. The list of countries from which various people visited and the values of their browser's Language-Accept headers peeked my interest, and I realized that I needed to offer Paste Ninja's interface in multiple languages so people could use my service in whichever language they may find the most comfortable. So, Paste Ninja is now multilingual!

The goal is to translate PasteNinja's interface into the top 10 or so languages. I'm obviously not not going to be able to accurately translate all of the necessary text into each language myself, so I've started enlisting some help.

Years ago I studied French and Esperanto, so those were the first two languages I targeted. I then searched out people who were willing to review my work and correct any grammar deficiencies and the like. With the help of Babelfish, Google Translate, and some very creative Internet searching, I was able to produce rough translations in other languages.

If you ever need a professional French translator, Sophie Vialaneix is unbelievably good in every way and comes with my highest recommendation. She was so friendly and professional that it made me wish I had more text for her to review (thanks, Sophie)! Remi Woler from #phpc was wonderful and offered to correct my Dutch (thanks, Remi). My friend and co-worker Bobby Mladenov graciously provided a Bulgarian translation (thanks, Bobby), and Dr. Wing Ming Chan is also graciously providing a Chinese translation (thanks, Wing). Keep their efforts in mind as well when you see text that doesn't read "Grandmother your password here."

The interface is available in other languages as well, such as German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. These were produced with translation software and some creative Internet searching, so expect them to be less-than-perfect. I will revise the translations as I find people proficient in them who are willing to review them. If you'd like to volunteer your skills, just leave a comment and let me know!

Oh, and the interface is also available in Pig Latin just for fun. I'm sure Ben Ramsey will be happy to take all the credit for that idea. ;)

Update 12/21/08: David Zülke was kind enough to review the German translation. Thanks, David!

Update 12/23/08: Sacha Poznyak was kind enough to review the Russian translation, Ali Curtis was kind enough to review the Spanish translation, and David Cole was kind enough to review the Portuguese. Thanks, Sacha, Ali and David!

Update 12/31/08: Shahar Fisher was gracious enough to donate his time to review the Hebrew translation. Thank you, Shahar!

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