Google Adds Translation Bots To Google Talk

I checked, and it seems we actually went by a whole week last week without any Google news, blasphemy!

In order to cleanse our hallowed halls here at GG castle from such a travesty, I bring you news straight from the Google blogs: Google's added translation bots to its Google Talk service.

You can use these bots to give you quick translations from one language to another, or even add them to a group chat to automatically translate statements made in the room. The usual caution with automated translation applies: be prepared for some really funny, and perhaps maybe even insulting, translations to come across the pipes. If both parties understand that, then these bots could certainly help us breach some communication boundaries, leading to eventual world peace (I'm sure Google would love for you to believe that last line.)

The bots are named with standard two letter language abbreviations, and follow the format "[from language]2[to language]@bot.talk.google.com". English to Chinese, for example, is "en2zh@bot.talk.google.com".

There are 24 bots currently available: ar2en, de2en, de2fr, el2en, en2ar, en2de, en2el, en2es, en2fr, en2it, en2ja, en2ko, en2nl, en2ru, en2zh, es2en, fr2de, fr2en, it2en, ja2en, ko2en, nl2en, ru2en, zh2en.

Merry Christmas, God Jul and 圣诞快乐 [Google Talk Blog]