Video summary
The video features Gemma from Standex Electronics, a German WordPress agency partner, discussing their journey in managing a massive global website migration involving 48 sites across multiple languages. Initially facing significant resource constraints and lacking local representation in many target countries, the team relied on manual translations by colleagues who were already busy with other tasks, resulting in incomplete coverage for major markets like Japan and China. To address this, they first attempted using DeepL, a machine translation engine known for speed and literal accuracy. However, this approach quickly revealed critical flaws; while the words were translated correctly, the intent and cultural context were often lost, leading to awkward phrasing that failed to resonate with native speakers or maintain the brand's philosophy of "customer intimacy."
Realizing that a purely automated solution was insufficient for their B2B engineering audience, the team pivoted to integrating OpenAI's Large Language Model (LLM) capabilities through the Multilingual Press plugin. This shift allowed them to implement project-specific instructions, enforce strict brand guidelines, and handle complex technical terminology more effectively than standard machine translation engines. The transition proved highly successful in terms of both quality and cost-efficiency; by leveraging token-based pricing rather than character counts, they drastically reduced expenses, especially when re-translating entire sites after correcting errors. Furthermore, the process time for publishing content across all languages dropped from hours or days to just minutes, enabling their small team to scale operations without burning out on manual review cycles.
Despite these significant improvements, the speakers emphasize that AI does not replace the need for human oversight; rather, it serves as a powerful tool that requires verification. They encountered specific challenges such as inappropriate tones in Japanese translations and semantic errors where technical terms like "bare magnets" were mistranslated into nonsensical phrases like "naked magnets." These issues highlighted that while AI can handle the heavy lifting of translation volume, human partners are essential for cultural nuance, quality assurance, and refining prompts to ensure accuracy. The ultimate conclusion is a balanced approach: trust the technology for its speed and scalability, but always verify the output to maintain brand integrity and customer connection, effectively turning a potential bottleneck into a streamlined workflow.
Read the full video transcript
Well, hello everybody.
My name is Gemma. So nice of you guys to
join us today. I'm South African, so I'm
really sorry if you don't understand the
accent, but just raise your hand and Dan
will translate for you. [laughter]
Um, so thank you so much for coming to
the last session of the day. I know
you've had quite a long day, but we're
so glad to have you here. Today we are
talking about lost in a machine
translation. So we're going to take you
through one of our projects um that we
used a translation tool um and basically
the fun the wins the not such wins um
and we'll take you through that. So just
to introduce you although Betsy has
already done a great job. Thank you
Betsy. I am Gemma. I am from South
Africa. Um, just before I start, are
there any avid Friends fans?
Oh, thank goodness there's two of you.
[laughter]
>> Wow. No other Friends fans.
>> Okay.
>> Okay. So, do we know the scene?
All right. Well, we'll explain it to
you. Pivot.
>> Exactly.
>> We will explain it to you. Um, but
basically now you know where our slide
is going. So, like I said, I'm from
South Africa. Um I'm a software delivery
manager. I work at side which is a
German WordPress agency. Um and yeah
that's me
>> and uh this is Orestes. Uh I come from
Greece. Uh I am a senior WordPress
engineer for uh site. I've been with
site for uh a little over six years and
uh I have been the technical lead for
the standx electronics project which
means that uh my team and I are
basically creating clever and effective
solutions for whatever problem he
decides to throw at us. I'm the client.
I have all the problems and they have
all my solutions. I'm Dan Pelato. Um I'm
originally from Chicago but I live in
Michigan. So, apologies if any of you
are Ohio State fans. Um, but I've been
with Sandex Electronics for just over
two years and I've been in uh the
digital marketing space for for just
over 18 years.
>> All right. So, just a quick overview of
what we're going to be taking you
through. So, if you're a Friends fan,
you will know that the series all start
with these, but because there are not
very many, this will make more sense.
So, the one with the massive global
rollout, that was what the ask and
approach from our client. Um, the one
where some of our translations got a
little bit too literal. So, we'll take
you into some surprises that we found
and we had some fun with. The one where
we tried open AI because that's why
you're here, right? And the one with the
human partner. So, what worked, what
didn't work, and basically our verdict
on this project. Um, and then we will
open the floor to questions at the end.
>> So, let me give you just a little bit of
background on Standex Electronics.
Standex Electronics has been around for
many years. were a a large global
manufacturer of electronics uh
industrial B2B uh components and when I
joined Standex uh we had one site one
domain and we supported a few languages
on subdomains and uh you know we've
grown through a lot of acquisitions so
we had some legacy sites and I was kind
of brought in to manage a a global
redesign uh migration project and now
current state we still are Sandex
Electronics but we've broken our product
lines into three brands, Detect Edge and
Grid that have uh distinct product
offerings and now we are one uh one
company but we are really four brands
and we are launching sites across 12
different languages or sorry 12
different countries across nine
languages. So we are in the process of
our migration which started about a year
ago. Um when we are done with it we will
go from one site to 48 sites and my
background is SEO SCM. So I don't know
how I got in charge of a massive global
redesign but uh these guys are here to
help. [snorts]
So um let me kind of walk through the
problem if if that wasn't clear enough.
It's it's a a big large scale project
and as you guys may or may not be at
different companies that are big or
small, our team is very small and we
have a big problem to get after. So, so
we had to partner with a an agency to
help kind of fill the gaps, right? I'm
only one person and we've got a team of
marketing managers in the different
countries for the different brands. So,
um you know, this was kind of a crawl,
walk, run approach and I would say we're
probably in the middle of sprinting,
right? We're not quite at the run. You
can go ahead and go to the next slide.
So, um, as I mentioned, we have limited
local support, right? So, when we came
on, we have not only brand managers, but
they're country specific, right? So, we
have somebody in the US for detect,
we've got somebody that is global for
edge, we've got somebody that's in India
for grid. Uh, we don't have somebody in
every country in all the countries that
we want to have a global presence in. We
want to have a global footprint but we
are only limited by the certain uh
limited resources that we have with
those limited resources. Our old site
was manually translated. We didn't have
an agency uh we weren't doing any kind
of AI translation. We were saying hey
our you know our Chinese colleague and
our German colleague can you guys
manually translate this content? Well
marketing managers they're not digital
specific. So they've got other tasks.
They're doing trade shows. They're doing
emails. They're very busy. they don't
have time to translate a lot of content.
So as a result, our old site was
probably 80 70 to 80% translated in
German, maybe 60 to 70% in in uh in
Chinese and then uh Japan I think it was
maybe about 50% and so much so that they
actually had built their own Japan site
for their global audience. Um and that
was our reach German, Chinese and Japan,
Japanese. And we didn't have uh
representation in all the countries that
we wanted to play in the countries that
we are getting leads from that we're
doing business in, but we didn't have
that global footprint because our our
team is very small and we don't have
that that big global reach. And you
know, most of us don't speak and read
and write all the different languages.
And I certainly don't speak or read any
languages besides English. And they
thought I was the man for the job. So uh
that's uh you know a bit of the high
level of our of our problem.
>> So the approach we followed was our
usual go-to combination. So we started
off with the WordPress multicight and on
top of that we used the multilingual
press which is site's own multilingual
solution and uh in uh this setup its
brand and its language gets its own
website which keeps things well
separated and clean and multilingual
press takes care of u uh keeping track
of all the content relations between the
websites
to help To reduce the required manual
effort from the editorial teams, we uh
opted for a fairly new at the time uh
feature of uh multilingual press which
was automatic translations
and briefly and oversimplified. What
this does is to uh take a the content of
a page or a post, send it over to an
external service provider and it
receives back translated content which
then reimpports into uh the page
content.
Uh for those service providers, we can
either have uh a machine translation
engine or a large language model an LLM.
There are a lot of differences between
um machine translation and LLMs spanning
quite a few different aspects. Uh first
of all they have completely different
architecture. Uh their training methods
completely different and of course the
original purpose they were built for
again different.
Of course it has its own strengths and
weaknesses. For example, uh machine
translation engines are super fast and
have very strong literal accuracy
whereas uh LLMs are great at handling
instructions and carrying over meaning
and intent.
Small spoiler
what started as a great strength didn't
actually fit this project very well.
So in terms of the plan, we did not plan
for this translation piece to become its
own project entirely. And basically
that's what it what it did. We started
with the simple um multi-ress well sorry
multilingual press the multi-sight um
and to auto translate it. So then that
scaled to seven markets um and it's kind
of started to really bear the weight of
the tools that we were using. Um and so
we looked at the languages and we
thought okay well let's start somewhere.
And so any guess as to which language
would have been the easiest language to
start with?
Throw some guesses at me.
>> Greeks.
>> I heard it over here. Who said German?
All right.
>> Right. Because that's the easiest
language
>> naturally. Yeah, I read and write
German. Sure. [laughter] I mean, I had a
German exchange student one point, so I
was like asking her to review our
website at one point, but um it made
sense for Standex, right? We have uh a
secondary headquarters that's based in
Germany, which is a big reason we
brought on side, their German-based
agency. And the tool that we were using
for the translation up front was DL,
which is also a German-based translation
service. So, between side, deep l our
local team, uh German, we should have
been able to crush it, right? That that
was the most obvious. It worked really
well until it didn't.
uh the words were translated but the
let's just say the intent behind the
words were uh not really translated
appropriately.
>> You could say that.
>> So at Standex we have a philosophy
called uh customer intimacy and it's
this idea behind partnering with our
customers coming alongside of them from
design to development to deployment of
custom solutions. Right? really kind of
handholding all the way through the
process and really building that
relationship with that customer. Any
guesses as to what customer intimacy
translates to in German?
[laughter]
I am not going to say it, but thank you
sir for shouting that out. Yes, it means
that we were more intimate with our
customers than we would maybe like to
be.
So you know deep l understood the the
the words and the translations but
unfortunately it didn't understand
the context of the page that was being
translated right so it was more of a
little literal onetoone translation and
um you know when my German colleagues
saw the page they they informed me uh
what it meant and we quickly had to uh
>> say it with me
>> penet. [laughter]
So, um, as you can imagine, um,
>> Oh, sorry, I missed that one. Sorry,
that's my mistake. Carry on, Dan.
[laughter]
>> Go ahead.
>> No. So, so what we did is like Dan said,
his German colleague found it. The site
was live. So, what we did is we picked
it up, we hid the site internally. We
had discussions around how what we were
going to do and we had to ultimately
pivot with this because this solution
was not working. Um, it wasn't really
cost-ffective. it wasn't it was taking a
lot of time from us. Um and so we didn't
really take it very lightly. So Dan
has a really good relationship with Does
anyone have any imaginary friends when
you were a kid? I had an imaginary
friend when I was a kid. Dan has an
imaginary friend called Chad GPT.
And so it was not difficult to convince
Dan to switch over into our pivot. To be
fair, I'm not the only I guarantee I'm
not the only one who has named their AI
agent. Anybody else have a name name for
their
>> You are the only one.
>> Chad. No. Okay.
>> I'm
>> afraid you're the only one.
>> Well, let's be clear here. This This
wasn't just a translation problem. This
was a process problem, right? We very
easily could have just gone in and asked
a German colleague to change the title
of the page. But this was bigger because
this is going to be rolled out to other
countries where we don't have local
language. We don't have people on the
team that can review. So, we need a
process that we can trust long term. So,
when we roll out into France and Italy
and Spain and other countries where we
don't have local representation, I need
to be able to trust that it's accurate,
right? Again, not speaking or reading or
writing any of these languages. Um, you
know, I put my trust in in the
technology
>> Chad
>> in Chad. Um so you know as you can
imagine having limitations of onetoone
translation you get issues like like we
run into where it's not only just
inaccurate from a um well I should say
it's accurate from a a translation
standpoint from word to word but as um
one of the speakers on a previous um
seminar actually talked about the
cultural applicability of of AI right we
need to make sure that the content that
we're talking about is representative of
of culture in context of the of the
content right? It's not just like word
for word, but it has to make sense to
our customer and the native speaker. Um,
not just the people that are working on
the project. So, we had things to
consider like the brand and language and
cultural context, all these different
meanings.
>> From a delivery perspective as well, the
automation of this just wasn't working.
So, I mean, as Dan said, he doesn't read
or write German or Chinese. And so, we
were having Dan's teams were doing the
reviews and they were having to do these
manual corrections. So they were
constantly waiting for these and there
was they were updating substantial
amounts of incorrect translations. And
so when we looked at it in the bigger
picture, we needed a solution that would
improve the accuracy. We needed a
solution that would reduce this manual
effort. Um and there were a lot of
factors that contributed to it. I mean
there were different time zones. There
were there was planning into teams. You
know people had other work in in dance
team that they needed to get on top of.
So overall from every aspect it just was
a very lengthy we were working a lot
harder rather than smarter.
>> So we began exploring uh a switch to
open AI and uh being an LLM it offered
us a way more flexible way to control
the translation behavior. It allowed us
to uh have project specific instructions
and uh provide uh approved terminology
and brand guidelines and language
specific rules. So we didn't have to
rely any longer on a fixed machine
translation engine.
>> So did we know what we were doing when
we brought this solution to Dan?
>> Wait, what?
>> Partially [laughter]
>> surprise kind of. It was one of those
yes and figure it out later, say yes,
figure it out later moments. We we had
confidence in our teams. We had
confidence in ourselves. We had
confidence in in Open AI. Um and like I
said, it was quite an easy sell for Dan
with Open AI and it became a
collaborative trial between side and
between Stanx Electronics. Um we
discussed the person the possibility of
using Open AI with our internal teams.
who researched it, we moved into it. Um,
but this was the first time we tried it
with a client. Um, and happy to say that
it worked out really well. But given his
excitement around open AI, um, it was it
was very quick to get moving. Um, and
what started as just a suggestion
internally actually moved into a a
really um, a great trial with a great
outcome.
>> Well, and something else to to keep in
mind, too, you know, I mentioned we're a
small team. So we had an existing site
with one brand and then we launched
three new brands that had no identities,
right? So we don't have a team of
copywriters on hand and it was really me
and my buddy Chad that were working on
building out a lot of completely brand
new content, right? I've got some
guiding principles and our brand tone
and voice and uh but a lot of the a lot
of the content on the sites was net new
content that was reviewed by product
managers and engineers but we had
already created a uh well an intimate
relationship with Chad I suppose is
[laughter]
so it it made sense to when she they
brought up the idea of using open AI
said of course this this just makes
sense for us
>> and all this might sound easy and in a
way it kind of was. So for starters,
OpenAI was already integrated into the
core of multilingual press. So we didn't
had to build the integration from
scratch, which was kind of a nice to
have when launching a new project. And
it's really easy to activate it. It's
basically just a checkbox setting up the
API key and picking your model. And it
mostly works out of the box. There is a
built-in uh system prompt that controls
quite a lot of uh things regarding the
translation behavior like um um
various uh guidelines like uh how the
HTML markup of the uh blocks should be
transferred and not messed up by the uh
translation process and uh the security
aspects and guard rails around all these
uh translation behavior. So no one gets
to do anything weird and uh handling
formality and tone and such things. But
uh by using the service uh after a while
we figured out that there are some rough
edges. So we had to do some fine-tuning.
So we went in and configured the uh
bakedin uh system prompt to have those
brand guidelines and the technical
terminology in place and improved cart
rails and things like that.
>> Yeah, it's more than just, you know,
setting up a glossery of terms. I think
a lot of translation services out there,
agencies, um, they ask you for a
glossery, especially for an electronics
company, as you can imagine, there's a
lot of technical terms, a lot of terms
that aren't used in in every everyday
language. Um, different part numbers,
you know, voltages and amps and things
that that are very specific to our
brand. So, we had to go beyond glossery.
And I think, you know, working with AI
and being able to customize prompts
takes that to the next level. So one of
the things uh I wanted to do so we
didn't have this issue again is we need
to like I said improve our process. We
needed to bring in some quality
assurance. So we actually met with two
different people uh two of our marketing
managers and said all right let's take
the current state here's the here's the
page uh you know we took a product page
a technical page um you know an about us
page different types of pages and pulled
them up in their current state. These
are the ones that had been translated in
open eye. This is the current state
that's not live on staging. Then we're
going to go through and we're going to
take that same page, log in, and we're
going to republish the page with
multilingual press using OpenAI and then
show the new updated publish page side
by side in, you know, in a in a browser.
So I was screen sharing with our our
German team and our uh Japan team and
our China team. And I said, "All right,
read these thor through and tell me are
is it better? Is it worse? Is it
inappropriate?" Um, and I'm happy to say
it was uh they were both astonished at
how well the translation had improved,
not only from a a local language
standpoint, but also from a technical
standpoint, right? It it it read as
though um it would be understood by our
customer, the engineer. So we wanted to
just uh not only do like a a hallway
testing comparison with our stakeholders
more or less um but we evaluated it on
two criteria. If you want to go to the
next slide we looked at how well does
the translation go from English to local
language whether that be German,
Chinese, Japan etc. making sure that it
it reads accurately. So for us the
source of truth we start with the do in
English and then everything is
translated out. So, how well is it? What
is the readability in local language
versus deep and and open AAI? But also
taking the translated language and then
translating it back into English to
understand did it did it accurately
match the intent behind the original um
content, right? And DL did good. If you
use DPL, you know it's it's it's very
dependable. Um they do a really good
job, but there were just certain things
that we needed to improve upon. So they
were graded well. They in terms of
readability, they were still an A high
B, but OpenAI was better. It was a
higher higher grade. Same thing with the
semantic match back into English. If I
had to put this in a, you know, a school
grading system, right, a deep got an A.
In a lot of places, that's good enough.
But with OpenAI, it was an A+. Now,
neither of them I want to call out is
100%. Right? We know this is AI. There
isn't anything that AI has done yet that
is 100%. So keep that in mind. But it
was dramatically improved where I now
have trust in the process, trust in the
team, trust in the output of switching
to AI that we can launch sites in
languages that we don't have local
representation and feel
97% confident that you know it's going
to read well for our customers, our
engineers and our stakeholders.
So, we found some more favorites and as
Dan mentioned this, there were also some
some caveats to using Open AI. Um, so
we're going to take you through just a
couple of them. The first one is the
Japanese. So, Japanese got the tone
wrong. So, we sent it over to Dan's
colleague in Japan and when he read
through it, he kind of said to us, "This
is a little bit more like surfer beach
bum tone than I would like." Now, I'm
from a surf town, so I was like, "Well,
what's the problem?" Um but I suppose
when you are a B2B engineering website
um you really don't want to you want to
avoid that. So our fix I mean it was as
simple as a prompt enhancement
um which we did.
>> Yeah. Uh that one was not a favorite but
definitely worth remembering. So uh one
day uh we received a message from Dan
saying like look the blog page is in
Hiddi
and that would be nice but for the
Indian website we're using Indian
English. So the blog page had title
content slug all translated into HI
which of course broke navigation broke
internal links it caused a ton of issue.
So we reverted back to the last working
version and then again went into the
prompt and added more guard rails so it
respects the language and local
and then we got to the French version
and um so standex electronics has uh has
magnets that come in packaging. They're
enclosed into housing. We have both uh
magnets that are in housing and are not
in housing and those are referred to as
bear magnets. And uh the good news is it
was translated properly. There was no
issues. There was no concerns from the
French team. But as you can imagine when
I go back and I check that how well it
translates back into English, it
translated bare magnets into naked
magnets. And of course you could just
imagine the fear that came over me
having just gone through what we did.
And I had to make sure that this was in
fact not inappropriate. It was uh
accurate. So that uh it was correct, but
it was I don't know if I'd say it's
funny. It was a little concerning at
first. But we we were we were safe.
>> So we had we looked at this and we had
some cost comparisons and some other
open AI wins which Dan will take you
through. Um but it we we saw a lot of
benefits to this collaborative trial and
we thought it would definitely be
helpful and knowledge that we would love
to share with you. Um we definitely took
it into a few of our projects. Um and
even though it's off a little bit
slightly off just the translation of
open AI Dan, why don't you take us
through some of the quick wins we found?
Yeah, I mean we were evaluating costs,
right? We're switching vendors. So, one
of the questions that our management
team is going to have is is, hey, what's
what's the what's the investment
difference here? Because we had an
expectation going into this of what cost
would look like. And with Deep, there's
there's monthly subscription services,
there costs for so many characters, and
going from one site to 48 sites,
hundreds of pages for each brand, you
can imagine this is going to get pretty
expensive pretty quick. Um, and it
wasn't astronomical, but it it came with
a cost. And then when we looked at
OpenAI, and we know OpenAI and all the
AI tools like to like to charge you by
tokens, I said, "Well, let's, you know,
throw some money at it and see what ends
up happening." And it it literally I
mean, we were pushing content every
single day. And it was costing less than
a dollar a day to the point where with
the Japan example, instead of going page
by page and retroactively fixing each
page when there's hundreds of pages, I
said to Side, I said, "Can we just
delete it? It wasn't live yet. And just
redo it all because it had been
translated in DL. And now that we had
OpenAI, can we re-ransate the whole
site? And Arrestus was very nervous. He
said, "I don't know. That might cost a
lot." I said, "A let's do it. It's I'm
not going to go page by page. That'll
take too long." It was less than 30
bucks for the whole No, two sites
because we did the electronic site and
the detect site.
>> That was a no-brainer. I said this was
fast. It was very inexpensive. And most
importantly, it was scalable. Right.
This is something that we can then take
and roll out to all the different other
countries very quickly, very cost-five.
>> And apart from like the cost part of it,
which of course is important, there was
another win. So one of the problems that
uh uh Dan came to us with was that they
are a team of limited resources and we
tried to keep the uh amount of time
required for manual things to the bare
minimum and day-to-day operations of the
uh current setup. showed that for things
like publishing content across all
languages, we were now looking at 15 to
30 minutes depending on content length.
While in previous setup with manual
effort, that would have been hours maybe
even days. And similarly for cloning a
whole website and re-ransating the uh
whole thing
we were looking at maybe a few minutes
for the cloning process and then a
couple of hours for the whole
translation in the previous setup. Again
that would have been days maybe weeks.
So there was a huge reduction in the
required time. And a pro too that I
don't think you guys knew is if you do
partner with an agency, it works to your
advantage if you're US-based to hire a
European agency because you can give
them something to do at the end of their
day and when you wake up the next
morning, everything's magically done and
taken care of. So that was also just
that's just us.
>> That's right. Yes. Yes.
>> Yeah. But yeah, it it cut our time in in
half. Like I mentioned, not only a small
team, but they have other things to do.
They're not sitting around waiting for
for content to review. So, you know,
being very respectful of their time and
their priorities was was a win as well.
>> Yeah. So, I mean, from a from a software
delivery perspective, it really
flattened our project timeline. Um, and
I just wanted to be clear like AI, it
didn't solve our translation problem by
any [clears throat] means. But what it
did do is it really removed that
bottleneck of the, you know, the whole
project. I mean, it was the operational
scaffolding around translating the
sites, not necessarily the translation
itself.
So our overall verdict, open AI
translations are really strong, but
human review is actually essential. So
if you came to this conference and
you're looking for answers wondering
whether AI will steal your job, anyone
in manual translations here, then I
think you'll be fine. But that said, it
I think AI does still need a human
partner. I think that's been one thing
that we've
>> kind of throughout the entire entirety
of our project. Um, and the real
surprise for us, which I suppose is
really nothing to do with
the the coding and the actual
day-to-day, but for us, it really built
quite a uniquely dynamic team going
through all of these trials. Well,
that's my
>> dare I say we became friends.
>> Sure. [laughter]
But yeah, I mean, every every one of
these presentations, there's a lot of AI
presentations this this week. I I'm
pretty sure the takeaway is is trust but
verify, right? AI is great and it's
getting better. I mean, even when we
started this this evolution to where we
are now, translation every week, every
month is always improved with every
prompt enhancement, but it still
requires intervention. You can trust it,
but verify that it is accurate. If
anyone's familiar with that famous line
from Ronald Reagan.
>> Yeah. And there will be certain things
that are not going to work out of the
box. And I think sometimes we come in
hoping that these things will work out
the box and we can just have it done and
put it implemented and it'll just be
okay. But it's actually okay for it not
to work out the box. Human connection is
such a vital part of our day. Um, and I
really think like without it we wouldn't
have found the dynamic that we have
within our team. I mean we used the
friends theme because in our weekly
calls it probably takes us a good 20
minutes to get to work.
>> [laughter]
>> Um we really I mean as you can imagine
with all the fun examples so Dan always
comes with something new and exciting.
Um but yeah it's been great to work in
this team.
So what would we do differently if we
were to look back at this project? So
when we asked each this question to each
of us my first initial answer was well
nothing. I mean it was great. We found
loves we found friends. Um we have a
successful project. But actually I think
from my perspective I would have trusted
our curiosity more. I think we get into
a position where our day-to-day keeps us
in a tunnel very focused perspective. Um
and you you get into a habit of it's
always been done this way and even
though open AI could help you and it
could really enhance your your
dayto-day. I think when when things have
been done a certain way forever. And I
think if we had been more curious going
into it, we probably would have solved
the German
um model that changed your business
model.
And uh in Greek we have a phrase it goes
by
it roughly translates to if I only I had
known earlier and uh yeah
if I was to do this again I would
definitely go with open AAI or a
different LLM from the get-go. This
would have saved us a lot of time and
would have allowed the team to do more
things more quickly.
>> Yeah. And one of my one of my changes
that I would have done differently, we
actually implemented and and pushed live
this week. I would have changed and kept
all of the URL slugs in English. Uh we
thought an advantage to having, you
know, local language sites in every
country was having a translated URL. and
until one of our colleagues brought it
to our attention and say, "Hey, these
characters, these Asian characters
especially, don't work with a lot of our
marketing automation tools and marketing
platforms. It's causing problems. We
can't track things." And come to find
out when we did some competitive
research for a B2B space that's a global
company, including our competitors, all
the URLs stayed in English. And a lot of
us don't look at URLs, right? We're
we're we're navigating through organic
search or we're clicking on a link in an
email. So, it really is more or less
irrelevant to what it is actually
written. And then we can gain a lot more
um tracking and visibility into some of
our platforms. So all of our sites now
are on English URLs.
Wish we would have started that from the
beginning.
>> Yeah.
>> Thank you.
>> And for my friends friends fans, can we
we do this together?
Anyone? [laughter] Okay.
Thank you guys. That was really
interesting. I hope that uh we have some
questions. Um there are microphones on
both sides. I invite everyone to come up
and ask questions while we still have
these lovely folks in the room.
>> Yeah. What was the tool that you used in
the first place that gave you the the
bad intent that it translated literally?
>> It was um a translation service called
Deep L. It was a a German-based tool
that is I think commonly used for
translating things like um well I don't
know if they do I'm sure they do web
content but they do a lot of uh
cataloges or or paper print
translations. Um but that's what we were
using before.
>> Okay. Um, why? Um, I'm doing stuff in
Spanish and the Spanish is complicated
because the Spain Spanish is one thing.
Mexican Spanish is something else. Latin
American, I'm from Puerto Rico, which is
different from Cuban Spanish. And I've
been using Google Translate,
um, which has been doing pretty good,
but I still have to proofread it. Um,
>> the verification process. Yes,
>> exactly. Um, [sighs]
[gasps] what my my question is is is
what do you recommend? I don't know if
you know, like if I'm going to translate
some some pages, not all of my one of my
websites, um, should I just keep it in
generic Spanish,
business,
or, you know,
>> why you take that one?
That's a very good question and I really
believe that it boils down to your
audience and your intent. But uh if you
want to support different audiences that
are very localized, I could go do
different localized versions. So
supporting Mexican, Spanish, and Puerto
Rican Spanish and whatever. And uh by
having an LLM integration into this
whole translation process, you can pass
all the required instructions. So you
can ensure at a certain level that the
cultural dent and the um specific local
rules are in place and the content
carries over dent in a correct way.
>> Okay, thanks.
Great question.
>> Hi, my name is Mark. Uh, I have been
using Multilingual Press for at uh, my
company for the last six months. I think
we ran into your team last year at Word
Camp US and uh, so started using it. We
started with uh, two languages, Spanish
and Vietnamese. And we also started with
DL. Spanish seemed to work pretty well.
And again, I know that that's deep and
not side, but uh and then we had almost
exactly what you uh described as the
beach bum style for
>> I thought you were gonna say it was the
other one. No. Okay.
>> No, no, no. Uh for Vietnamese. So, uh as
soon as I get back, I'll be tasked with
uh three more languages. Japanese um and
I'm blanking on the other two, but
German might have been one of them. Um
so, you've given me a lot to think about
with the use of open AI. So, we're
probably gonna have to to switch at some
point, but um so I'm wondering um so as
we went through this process, we
discovered some areas that other plugins
seem to handle, but uh multilingual
press didn't. So, one thing in
particular was like your global strings
that are in the theme, uh things like
read more buttons and such like that.
Is there a plan to integrate that at
some point? Uh, is is that a separate
plugin?
>> That's a great question. Unfortunately,
I don't have the answer. What we usually
do, uh, it's to provide translations
with the theme, with the plugins. Uh,
but that's a great question. I'll make
sure to pass it on to the multilingual
press team and reach out.
>> Sure thing. And I don't know if uh just
to speak on that too, I don't I don't
know if you're working with site or not,
but there's obviously an advantage to
working with the agency that developed
the the plug-in and there's a lot of
custom functionality and custom modules,
content blocks that we created for ST or
side created for standex that wasn't
part of MLP and you know coming at this
project with the understanding that
everything was going to be translated
and when certain things weren't we
brought it back to the team and I I I
think it's fair to say MLP has evolved
and has improved. So, I don't know if
there's different versions of it that
are using, but I would definitely reach
out to the side team. They've been super
helpful in and making sure that elements
like like buttons and different custom
functionalities are are translated are
included in in the MLP product.
>> Yeah, for sure. And so, based on what I
just said, I also wanted to point out
that it was extremely easy for us to
build our solution on top of your
product. uh a couple prompts to Claude
and and it tied in and it tied in with
the DBL integration that was already set
up. So, it was easy for us to figure out
>> because the plugin is great. Um yeah,
thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> Awesome.