Problem with html and open realty

[roxytoo]

Wonder if anyone can advise? I'm pretty dim with html and sometimes wonder how I ever managed to get my website up and running!! I wanted to put a translator onto the pages of some properties and managed to do that here, seems to work ok

http://www.costablancaholidays.eu/listi ... nca-3.html

Problem is on this page where all the properties are listed (and on all similar drop downs)
http://www.costablancaholidays.eu/index ... +Del+Mar+V

this is being picked up from the code on the ones where I have put it

var referrer = document.location.href;

I think it maybe something to do with java but have no idea how to correct it other than put the flags a little further down the page??

[pepsipuss]

Hi Roxy
I can't answer the technical question but TBH my advice would be not to do it AT ALL.

If people want to ask Google Translate to translate it for them they can do it themselves, but what it offers is so poor in many respects, certainly in the French and the Spanish, that it does not do you any favours if it is perceived as copy that you have yourself in some way approved. Most of it is very clunky, unnatural to the point of being weird and incomprehensible and some of it is even inaccurate - just one example is that the French says that it can sleep up to 5 years!

If you really feel that you want to do it you need to reduce the original English copy to short factual bullet points - as soon as you get into long sentences and descriptive copy Google is lost - and even then there are no guarantees.

[roxytoo]

I know what you are saying but I am trying to get capture the people that are too lazy to do it themselves!! In the summer when I can get about 30 enquiries a day to direct to the website I wonder how many I loose because most cannot bother when they can't understand it! I can see from my stats that it is being used now but whether that will convert more enquiries who knows!

[pepsipuss]

I understand your desire to catch the non-English market but are you sure that any of these hits are actually foreigners?

The home page of the Costa Blanca Holidays site is translated using Google translate and a lot of it is unsurprisingly pretty awful. So I very much doubt whether many non-English speakers are finding their way to your page.

If you want to get to the foreigners you need to be on a site that targets them and pretty well ignores the UK market. I would recommend Rentalia as being less expensive than Homelidays and seems to do very well especially with the French and Spanish. They have most facilities covered with tick boxes which is really useful but if you do list with them it is important to have some copy in at least French, Spanish and probably German. The most effective way to do it is to do bullet points and get them professionally translated - long descriptive paragraphs ar e not required for a small property and might even be a deterrent.

[roxytoo]

My market is mainly french, then swedish, then swiss, lastly english!

[pepsipuss]

My market is mainly french, then swedish, then swiss, lastly english!

I stand corrected!! But do they come from this site?

[roxytoo]

Not mostly but getting better this last year. I redirect my enquiries to the site , I cannot afford to translate 250 properties though

[pepsipuss]

Not mostly but getting better this last year. I redirect my enquiries to the site , I cannot afford to translate 250 properties though

I thought we were just dealing with one property - my mistake!

However you could take the same approach: get key phrases translated into the important languages rather than loads of descriptive copy that I am not convinced anybody reads.

Take a look at how Homelidays does it - LOTS of tick boxes and not much copy.

[roxytoo]

Thanks, will think about that and have a look

[roxytoo]

Think I have sorted the html problem