How can I download a website source code to translate it? Thread poster: Spanish-English Translator
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A customer asks me to download the source code from his website to translate it. How do I do that? Is it safe, regarding viruses? Thanks and regards, AT
| | | | Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 20:45
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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| Offline browser | Dec 9, 2009 |
Argentine Translator wrote:
A customer asks me to download the source code from his website to translate it. How do I do that? Is it safe, regarding viruses?
1. See here:
http://www.proz.com/forum/software_applications/132076-software_used_to_extract_html_files_from_websites.html
2. Search the forums for "offline browser". Search Google for "offline browser".
3. Web sites don't contain viruses (unless you know something I don't).
4. Before you start translating, show the client what you downloaded and ask him to confirm that this is everything that you need to translate.
| | | | mediamatrix (X)
Local time: 14:45
Spanish to English
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| No simple answer | Dec 9, 2009 |
Without seeing the website and knowing how it is built there is really no way anyone here can properly answer that question.
Assuming you have IE8 (although other browsers have similar options) you could right-click each page and select 'view source' ('Ver código fuente' in the Spanish version) in the menu to show the HTML in a separate window. Then you can save that in the same way as any ordinary text file and substitute your translations for the original texts. The result, eve... See more Without seeing the website and knowing how it is built there is really no way anyone here can properly answer that question.
Assuming you have IE8 (although other browsers have similar options) you could right-click each page and select 'view source' ('Ver código fuente' in the Spanish version) in the menu to show the HTML in a separate window. Then you can save that in the same way as any ordinary text file and substitute your translations for the original texts. The result, even on very simple pages, will probably not be satisfactory for reasons too numerous to list here.
However, the real problem is that most modern websites are not 'plain HTML'. Instead, the pages are built individually according to choices made by the site visitor, often displaying content that is picked out from a database as and when required (as here on the Proz forum). In other words, there is no fixed source code for each page - every time the page is downloaded or refreshed it can be different. If you cannot get access to the database that delivers this variable content then there is no way to 'download the source code' that generates the displayed pages - all you can download is individual examples of these variable displays. And there may be text that requires translation which is not in the displayed pages, nor in a database, but instead is embedded in the hidden program code pages that generate the displayed pages and this program code is not accessible via vour browser.
When websites are built this way you can still see the code corresponding to the display in the same way as for HTML pages mentioned above. If you try it now on this forum page .... you will see a horribly messy mixture of program code, bits and pieces of disjointed text, lots of stuff that doesn't need translating and lots more stuff that must absolutely not be modified in any way or you'll break your client's website. Do you really want to try translating from that? I think not...
I suggest you tell your client that you have been advised not to work from 'downloaded code', and ask him to provide you with a plain text file containing everything he wants translated. Then let him take the responsibility and assume the risks associated with putting the translations into his website without breaking it.
MediaMatrix
[Edited at 2009-12-09 20:44 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Milan Djukić
Serbia
Local time: 20:45
English to Serbian
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| Agree with MediaMatrix | Dec 10, 2009 |
I could not agree more with Mediamatrix.
Regards,
Milan
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Mediamatrix is right about the potential problems with such a project.
If you happen to know that your site is made up of plain old static HTML pages, you could use wget to download them.
It's a very powerful little tool that you can instruct to download and save pretty much anything that has a URL. You have to learn some command line to use it but it's not too bad.
Basically, wget -m -np your.website/yourpage.com should do it.
If you have an exhaustive list of all... See more Mediamatrix is right about the potential problems with such a project.
If you happen to know that your site is made up of plain old static HTML pages, you could use wget to download them.
It's a very powerful little tool that you can instruct to download and save pretty much anything that has a URL. You have to learn some command line to use it but it's not too bad.
Basically, wget -m -np your.website/yourpage.com should do it.
If you have an exhaustive list of all URLs you need, just put them in a .txt file one URL per line and go wget -i txtfilewithURLs.txt
Once you got the hang of wget you will probably find that it comes in very handy sometimes.
[Edited at 2009-12-10 09:42 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | jimgreene87
United States
Local time: 14:45
English to German
+ ...
Download Mozilla Firefox. It's a web browser, much like Internet Explorer, Opera, etc.
When you have it installed, launch Firefox, navigate to the page you need, press Ctrl and U simultaneously and there you have the source code.
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jimgreene87 wrote:
Download Mozilla Firefox. It's a web browser, much like Internet Explorer, Opera, etc.
When you have it installed, launch Firefox, navigate to the page you need, press Ctrl and U simultaneously and there you have the source code.
The OP is a bit confused and wrote "source code" instead of "the files that make up the website" but that is what they need: download all the files of the website in one go so they can translate it, not view the HTML source online in whatever browser page by page.
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I really wouldn't use an offline browser for this.
They were made for - surprise, surprise - offline browsing. So they will probably modify the links to make them work offline (instead of http://www.whatever/page, C:/Documents and Settings/User/Documents/whatever/page). That's not what you want. I'm sure there is a way to disable this feature in some or most of them, but I think wget is just a better solu... See more I really wouldn't use an offline browser for this.
They were made for - surprise, surprise - offline browsing. So they will probably modify the links to make them work offline (instead of http://www.whatever/page, C:/Documents and Settings/User/Documents/whatever/page). That's not what you want. I'm sure there is a way to disable this feature in some or most of them, but I think wget is just a better solution. ▲ Collapse
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