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Get Translations in Google Chat
Posted by Kevin Purdy at 2:00 AM on December 20, 2007
Google has integrated translation tools into its Google Talk and GChat interfaces through the use of chat bots. To have a line translated from English to French, for instance, invite en2fr@bot.talk.google.com to chat, then simply chat the line you want to see translated. The bots use Google Translate as their back end, which, as one Blogoscoped commenter notes, has quite a few languages in rough beta, so this tool should mainly be used for casual or on-point word or line translations. For more translation tools and tips, try Wendy's guide to translation sites.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
Ken
Posted 8:51 AM 19/12/07
this is fun.. I keep getting in fights with Google bot.. I enjoy it cussing the crap out of me.
Ken
Khürt Williams
Posted 8:42 AM 19/12/07
This would be even more cool is Google Talk could do this on the fly. I could converse with my Québécoise cousin. I would type in English and she would receive my IM in French and vice-versa.
Khürt Williams
nerdsavant
Posted 8:19 AM 19/12/07
Has anyone tried this with the newly available group chat as an actual real-ish-time (albeit fairly crappy) translation service?
nerdsavant
OptoGeek
Posted 7:41 AM 19/12/07
That's the hottest thing since baked bread!
OptoGeek
thelouisguy
Posted 9:44 AM 19/12/07
@JeffCarr: For more languages, just add any of the 29 other translation bots. They're named using two-letter language abbreviations as "[from language]2[to language]@bot.talk.google.com", and the supported language pairs are: ar2en, bg2en, de2en, de2fr, el2en, en2ar, en2de, en2el, en2es, en2fr, en2it, en2ja, en2ko, en2nl, en2ru, en2zh, es2en, fi2en, fr2de, fr2en, hi2en, hr2en, it2en, ja2en, ko2en, nl2en, ru2en, uk2en, ur2en, zh2en. So, for French to German translation, talk to fr2de@bot.talk.google.com.
Pig latin is not supported, yet...
thelouisguy
JeffCarr
Posted 9:25 AM 19/12/07
This is worthless... en2pl@bot.talk.google.com doesn't work. No pig latin translation for me.
JeffCarr
cataspanglish
Posted 7:58 AM 19/12/07
Unfortunately Google translation, like all the other online translation tools, is worse than useless. And I MEAN worse than useless because less damage to your writing would be done by leaving it in the original language and letting your readers figure it out.
You can see an example of google drivel on my site [slowspain.wordpress.com]
If you have any kind of business that needs translation, pay a human. And as someone who has been in a trilingual relationship for over 8 years, believe me, sometimes even human translation doesn't work!
cataspanglish
Ann-Marie
Posted 1:51 PM 19/12/07
This is why I love Gmail!
Any other G-bots out there worth noting?
Ann-Marie
Duane
Posted 4:14 PM 19/12/07
Where the heck is the Esperanto translation? Useless.
Duane
dumbelinathedaft
Posted 7:27 PM 19/12/07
My favorite part is how the image selected for this post demonstrates the crapitude of the translation tool.
dumbelinathedaft