Google translate

Here's something to supplement last month's post about Google translation services; translate.google.com provides some nifty translation buttons that you can install on your toolbar. If you're working in one of the major languages (not Norwegian), this can come in handy. Eg. if you slide the "English to Russian" button to your toolbar, highlighting a word and pressing the button returns a translation into the specified language. The "Russian to English" button does the opposite. There are currently buttons for:

Arabic to English
Chinese to English
Chinese (Simplified to Traditional)
Chinese (Traditional to Simplified)
English to Arabic
English to Chinese (Simplified)
English to Chinese (Traditional)
English to French
English to German
English to Italian
English to Japanese
English to Korean
English to Portuguese
English to Russian
English to Spanish
French to English
French to German
German to English
German to French
Italian to English
Japanese to English
Korean to English
Portuguese to English
Russian to English
Spanish to English

Google translate

This new Google feature translates search terms into another language, searches pages in that language, and translates the results back into the original search language. Useful for identifying sources of information that a)would be missed altogether in a default langauge search adn b)are in languages that, to many people, are completely incomprehensible (e.g.,Arabic, Chinese, Russian) but the quality of machine translation is still pretty laughable. More about this feature in the Google press announcement.