Gmail to offer real-time language translation

Translate a message in the cloud

Google has announced it will launch real-time language translation in Gmail this week.

During a keynote address at the CeBit conference and exhibition in Sydney today, Google's product management director Matthew Glotzbach made the announcement, saying the integration should be available by tomorrow.

The new Gmail capability allows users to translate a foreign language e-mail in their inbox with one click.

Google has previously hinted at a translation service for Gmail.

Speaking about the benefits of cloud computing to the enterprise, Glotzbach touted the additional capabilities of cloud systems.

"Gone are the days when moving something to the web means losing functionality," he said. "Cloud computing is no longer an 'if' but a 'when' and when is now."

More about: Google
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Comments

1

Joseph

Tue 12/05/2009 - 16:35

Problem with such translations

Problem is the automatic translations aren't very reliable. Talked to friends in the language business and they said this would be perfct in 10-20 years. Meanwhile there's no alternative to regular translator. there are some low-cost web sites for this- elance, one hour translation, translations.com etc

2

Robert at myGengo

Tue 12/05/2009 - 22:50

That's what people use us for

As the previous commenter notes - this is probably not going to be a great benefit for that many people because of the low quality - especially with minor languages and Asian languages like Japanese and Korean.

Quite a few of our customers get their emails (and even personal dating messages!) translated through us - so people certainly want to be able to do it, but at a better quality than machine translation can provide.

3

jim

Thu 14/05/2009 - 04:01

Human translation

Why not do the same only by real human?
Use the masses that use google services every second and ask them to translate texts for the benefit of other users.
There are many resources of very cheap human translation like http://www.tomedes.com . Integrated in a google platform will be a killer app.

4

LinoTip

Mon 16/11/2009 - 21:45

We also offer a quick and reasonably priced translation platform: www.lingotip.com
Automatic translation can only take you so far.

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