Trumblog

Dang!

I’m bowled over by this little Christmas present from Google. Google Talk now includes automatic translation into 23 languages. Sending a message to [from language]2[to language]@bot.talk.google.com will return translation or perform automatic translation if included in a group chat.

Maybe it’s just the spirit of the times and hoping for peace on earth, but the many advances from Google this year this one seems especially impressive.

Update: Supported translation bots are:

• English to Arabic - en2ar@bot.talk.google.com
• English to Chinese - en2zh@bot.talk.google.com
• English to Dutch - en2nl@bot.talk.google.com
• English to French - en2fr@bot.talk.google.com
• English to German - en2de@bot.talk.google.com
• English t0 Greek - en2el@bot.talk.google.com
• English to Italian - en2it@bot.talk.google.com
• English to Japanese - en2ja@bot.talk.google.com
• English to Korean - en2ko@bot.talk.google.com
• English to Russian - en2ru@bot.talk.google.com
• English to Spanish - en2es@bot.talk.google.com
• Arabic to English - ar2en@bot.talk.google.com
• Chinese to English - zh2en@bot.talk.google.com
• Dutch to English - nl2en@bot.talk.google.com
• French to English - fr2en@bot.talk.google.com
• French to German - fr2de@bot.talk.google.com
• German to English - de2en@bot.talk.google.com
• German to French - de2fr@bot.talk.google.com
• Greek to English - el2en@bot.talk.google.com
• Italian to English - it2en@bot.talk.google.com
• Japanese to English - ja2en@bot.talk.google.com
• Korean to English - ko2en@bot.talk.google.com
• Russian to English - ru2en@bot.talk.google.com
• Spanish to English - es2en@bot.talk.google.com

Google Talk suggests that this can be used as a translator when used from a PDA.  Google Talk is available for the BlackBerry, which is what I am using to show off the functionality. The more I play with this the more I think that Google is Magic.