Posts
20th December 2007
Danny Gorog
Want to speak to someone overseas but can't speak their language? Google has added the world's first live translation system to its instant messaging network, truly delivering on the science-fiction promise of the "babelfish".
Google's IM network is available via the downloadable Google Talk software, on the web using the Google Talk Gadget, or through any software that supports the open-source Jabber chat protocol. It's also available via the left hand side bar in the Gmail window.
Today Google improved on Talk by adding on-the-fly language translation via 'bots' that you add to your Google Talk friends list.
Do you speak French? Or Arabic? Now you do with new Google language 'bots'
Translating using iChat and Jabber
To use the translation tools you'll need to add each individual language-to-language bot as a friend in your G Talk buddy list.
There are currently 24 supported bots and adding them is easy as long as you know the two languages you want to translate between.
You'll also need to append '@bot.talk.google.com' to the end of the two languages. I fired up Google Chat and used it to translate between English and French and English and Arabic and the response is almost instant.
For a complete list of language codes see here . If you add them and nothing happens it means that Google doesn't support it yet.
There's also another feature that I hadn't noticed before called Group Chat - this lets you invite multiple people into a chat, and can be used in conjunction with the languages bots to help a translation between you and your foreign friend. However, it's worth noting that both Group Chat and language translations are only available within G Talk and not to your AIM buddies unfortunately.
If you're not a fan of web-based IM clients then any Jabber compatible client (iChat included) should let you sign on to G Talk and add buddies locally.
Danny Gorog
Want to speak to someone overseas but can't speak their language? Google has added the world's first live translation system to its instant messaging network, truly delivering on the science-fiction promise of the "babelfish".
Google's IM network is available via the downloadable Google Talk software, on the web using the Google Talk Gadget, or through any software that supports the open-source Jabber chat protocol. It's also available via the left hand side bar in the Gmail window.
Today Google improved on Talk by adding on-the-fly language translation via 'bots' that you add to your Google Talk friends list.
Do you speak French? Or Arabic? Now you do with new Google language 'bots'
Translating using iChat and Jabber
To use the translation tools you'll need to add each individual language-to-language bot as a friend in your G Talk buddy list.
There are currently 24 supported bots and adding them is easy as long as you know the two languages you want to translate between.
You'll also need to append '@bot.talk.google.com' to the end of the two languages. I fired up Google Chat and used it to translate between English and French and English and Arabic and the response is almost instant.
For a complete list of language codes see here . If you add them and nothing happens it means that Google doesn't support it yet.
There's also another feature that I hadn't noticed before called Group Chat - this lets you invite multiple people into a chat, and can be used in conjunction with the languages bots to help a translation between you and your foreign friend. However, it's worth noting that both Group Chat and language translations are only available within G Talk and not to your AIM buddies unfortunately.
If you're not a fan of web-based IM clients then any Jabber compatible client (iChat included) should let you sign on to G Talk and add buddies locally.
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