Google's Translation Bot

In another instalment of 'I love Google' I present Google's Translation Bot, an instant messenger translator. Currently only available for GTalk, the translation bot is another buddy that will instantly accept you as a friend and translate whatever you say to it. There's one bot per translation so for Korean to English and vice versa you can add:

• ko2en@bot.talk.google.com
• en2ko@bot.talk.google.com

GTalk translator bots are nifty but not that practical in my Korean situation since using them makes some assumptions that simply aren't valid. For one, none of my Korean friends use GMail or GTalk so the selling point of having a multi-lingual conversation is made redundant; this isn't even about the Great Anti-Google Conspiracy since even MSN Messenger is a minority here and all the cool Korean kids are using NateOn. For another, I've switched to Naver's English Dictionary since I'm usually at somebody else's computer when translation and arm gestures fail me; it is, however, in those case that the bots would be awesomely useful if I had GTalk hooked up to my mobile device. Sadly, I do not.

I've added the GTalk Badge to the blog so feel free try it out and chat me up in any language.