Technology

When I first started this project as a hobby about eighteen years ago, it ran successfully without restriction on a standard hosting account. As the project has grown, and more and more people have started using the translator, that approach has become impractical. There is more about its beginnings on the Project History page.

I am very proud of the fact that the product is useful to so many people and flattered to receive positive comments from some academic institutions.

Over the years, I have spent considerable time looking for ways to make the translator run more efficiently on the server. One of the improvements has been developing my own caching algorithm, which stores the results of commonly translated words so they can be retrieved without repeatedly searching the dictionary database. This considerably reduces the number of database searches required, improves response times and helps keep the computing resources and hosting costs under control.

In order to constrain the overall computing resources used by the translator and find a hosting solution that is financially viable, I have also had to add logic that limits the number of transactions in any given period. This means that occasionally you may get a message saying that the system is busy and asking you to wait for a number of seconds before re-submitting the translation request.

The alternative would be to rent a dedicated server to run the product and recoup the cost by renting advertising space on the site. I have been contacted by organisations wishing to rent advertising space, but I do not want to do this. I feel it would detract from the use of the product, and I would like to keep it pure.

So I have added a donate button. If you use this website regularly, please consider making a small PayPal donation to help me cover the hosting costs and encourage me to keep going, supporting the project and adding features.