How do I track automatic translation of web page?

Question

My web site is posted in English. I do not have the Google Translate plugin installed, nor do I have any plans to install it. However, I'm inferring from some of my analytics data that people visiting my web site are using Google Translate to translate my pages. I presume they're visiting my site and seeing Google's "This page is in English. Would you like to translate it to [their language]?" and clicking "Translate".

Is there any hook in Google's automatic translation, e.g. some event fired, that I can use to detect these automatic translations and fire a Google Analytics event tracking the translation and hopefully capturing the language they're translating to? Note: I've seen this post, but the answer refers to the plugin, which I'm not using. I want to track when Google volunteers to translate automatically.

Solution 1

The Google Translate Toolbar only appears to send analytics events for the old (non-universal) analytics. I developed the following workaround. Just:

1. Ensure you set gaTrack: true and gaId: 'xxx' in your translation toolbar settings

2. Include the below script on your page alongside the translate snippet

   /*!
    * Capture Analytics for Google Translate
    * As of 2016, the Google Translate toolbar still only works with the old-style analytics (ga.js)
    * The code below mocks the old analytics object, captures the events and passes them to the new Universal Analytics (analytics.js)
    *
    * Source: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/a/101787/18749
    * Copyright (c) Simon East 2016, for yump.com.au
    * Free to use under MIT licence <https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT>
    */
   window._gaq = {}; window._gat = {};
   window._gat._getTracker = window._gat._getTrackerByName = function(){ return {
     _trackEvent: function(eventCategory, eventAction, eventLabel) {
       // [0] will send the event to the first analytics ID on the page (in case you have multiple)
       if (window.ga && ga.getAll()[0]) {
         ga.getAll()[0].send('event', eventCategory, eventAction, eventLabel);
         window.console && console.log('Translation event sent to Google Analytics:', eventCategory, eventAction, eventLabel);
       } else {
         window.console && console.warn('Could not locate Google Analytics when attempting to log translation events.')
       }
     }
   }}
   

Solution 2

I'm not finished with this yet as I'm sure we'll be able to get this set up as event tracking eventually but here is one way that may help/give you what you want for now...

In Google Analytics:-

Audience > Geo > Language

• Primary Dimension: Language
• Secondary Dimension: Hostname

Select advanced filter and set this to include hostname translate.googleusercontent.com like the below screenshot demonstrates:-

This will then show you all instances where Google Translate has been used to translate content on your website along with their detected language.

Comments

[JB Christy]

This is super helpful. Thanks! I still wish Google translate would trigger a Javascript event so I could catch it and trigger my own custom Analytics event. But this at least gives me some data to start with. Thanks again!