Google Promoting Interlingual Chat

[Piggy-Bank]

Google, as it turns out, is actually working on some pretty neat things. One of these is a bot that will help translate for you while chatting with someone who speaks a different language then you.

Merry Christmas, God Jul and 圣诞快乐

Tuesday, December 18, 2007 5:30 PM

OK, I cheated. I don't really speak Chinese. But I know a bot that does, and we're releasing it today together with number of other translation bots. For those not familiar with bots, a (ro)bot is a piece of software that acts as a chat contact and provides some fun or useful functionality.

If you want to try it, just add en2zh@bot.talk.google.com as a friend in Google Talk and send it a message to translate from English to Chinese. You can use it as an interpreter in your group chat, or as a pocket translator in your Google Talk client for BlackBerry.

Of course, the translations won't be that accurate, but I still think it's a great start. I've always wanted to be able to communicate with as many people as possible, but it's quite hard to share ideas with those who speak a different language as you. Hopefully, Google's chat bots will close that gap. It's a great idea, and I think it's going to work out great as other chat services adopt this idea. There are currently 24 language that are available, but more are to come.

Source

[Bacn]

Cool. Makes you wonder why we don't already have something like this.

[Cingal]

Meh, pretty cool.

Shame I'll probably never use it...

[Greed]

Now if they integrate that into cellphones, mmorpgs, and condoms; we'll finally get somewhere in life.

[Bacn]

Now if they integrate that into cellphones, mmorpgs, and condoms; we'll finally get somewhere in life.

All in good time.

[Piggy-Bank]

Now if they integrate that into cellphones, mmorpgs, and condoms; we'll finally get somewhere in life.

It's a start at least. I'm sure Google's going to want to integrate this with as many things as possible.

[Deimos]

great idea, except one small glaring problem...

i dont give my email to people who cant understand what the **** im saying

and even if i did give my email to random people who dont speak my language they wouldnt accept it or bother talking to me because they cant understand what the **** im talking about.

still.... progress?