We have for some time used a standard plug-in to offer instant translations of every web page and post in the hope of supporting colleagues from other countries.

Our site statistics show a great many overseas users and of course all of them are very welcome. Translation facilities may help – they are not perfect translations but are the best we can do and should give readers a good idea of our content.

Unfortunately, the translation facility has stopped working. As of December 1, 2011, Google Translate API v1 is no longer available; it was officially deprecated due to the substantial economic burden. Google Translate API v2 is now available as a paid service only, but the number of requests an application can make per day is limited.

This is dramatic news. A lot of WordPress plug-ins that depended on the free Google Translation Engine also not work any more. This is what happened to us.

Fortunately, Microsoft still provide a free translation API for programmer. However, though the plug-in writers have been busy the offerings so far are not fully compatible with the latest version of WordPress, or place an ugly translation bar across the top of every page.

We have decided, for the time being at least, to stay as we are without an operational translation plug-in. Hopefully, the incompatibility will be resolved quickly but that is out of our hands – please bear with us.