Gmail gains automatic email translation

It took longer than originally thought, but today Google made its inline email translation service available to all Gmail and Google Apps customers. 

This is a really great feature and one that differentiated Google from competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft both in the consumer space and in the enterprise. 

As a consumer, I still get email forwards from friends abroad and from my wife who is a French professor.  Just like everyone else, I'd have to cut and past into an online translation tool like Bablefish or Google Translate.  

It always bothered me that I couldn't use the translate button in the Google Toolbar for this.  But, because my email is set to English, it doesn't look at the rest of the webpage to see if it is written in another language.  Now the translation is a click away.

As the IT Manager for a medium-sized international branding firm, the news is even more important.  Not only can our London and Madrid offices communicate in their native tongues, they can do so in nested conversations without having to cut and paste in and out of translators. 

A suggestion for the Google Translators out there: Allow for translating outgoing messages as well.  While you are at it, put a translate button into Google Docs.  That'd one up Microsoft!

The process of activating it is fairly simple.  It isn't mainstream, so you'll need to go into Google Labs to turn it on.  Once in your Labs settings, simply enable Message translation.

Once activated, you'll see a new line with a Translate message to: English links.  The translation is almost instant.

It works as good as the other translators do above.  While I wouldn't say it is ever perfect, it usualy does more than enough to get the point across.

As Google said in its blog, "It's not quite the universal translators we're so fond of from science fiction, but thanks to Google Translate, it's an exciting step in the right direction."