ORION

Google offers easy translation service for Web pages

Google is offering Web publishers a free tool for providing translation services on their pages.

Lots of big companies based outside the U.S. offer English-language versions of their Web site with a click of a button, but Google's new service actually detects the home language of a visitor to your site and offers them a translated version of the page based on their browser settings. Fifty-one languages will be supported by the service, which Webmasters can offer by pasting a bit of code into their pages.

Such a service is only as useful as its accuracy, however. Google admitted the service is really designed to offer a "quick gist" of a page's content and hailed the work of professional translators on what is apparently International Translation Day. (Unbelievably, Hallmark does not appear to make a card commemorating this day.).

news.cnet.com