Just because you don't speak a certain language doesn't mean you shouldn't read interesting articles written in that language. After increasing
the number of supported language pairs and providing
an API, Google Translate is rapidly integrated in many Google services. YouTube started to translate
search results and
closed captions, Google Talk provides
translation bots, Google lets you
search content in other languages and now you can subscribe to feeds in foreign languages using Google Reader.
After subscribing to a feed in
Google Reader, click on "Feed settings" and select "Translate into my language". Google detects the feed's language and it translates the content into Google Reader's interface language (you can be changed it from the settings page).
Some Google-related sites in other languages than English:
Zorgloob (French)
Google Watch Blog (German)
OJObuscador (Spanish)
Google Discovery (Portuguese)
underGoogle (Portuguese)
When Google's machine translations improves, the next step could be translating content into your language without having to select an option. In the meantime, you can expect to find Google Translate integration in Gmail, Google Docs and other Google services.
{ via
Google Reader Blog }
Labels: Google Reader, Google Translate
Alex,
Thank you very much for indicating Google Discovery to your readers.
Best Regards!
said on November 11, 2008 10:25 AM PDT:
This is nice. But I'd rather skip those foreign feeds I can't understand, than have Google mess with my native tongue (Danish).
Goggle translations are, in my experience, really horrible. They do work, if you need some information that is completely unavailable in languages you understand. Say what some Egyptian human rights blogger is saying.
Other than that, if there is an alternative in a language you do understand, then skip the translation. It will mess with your linguistic instinct.
said on November 11, 2008 11:07 AM PDT:
THIS IS AMAZING!! I've been wanting this forever. I have tons of favorite sites that are just not in english
I noticed some problems with this feature:
* it only works if you select a feed from the sidebar, not in the "all items" or "tag" view
* Google Reader doesn't index the translation, so you can't find the translated posts unless you search in the original language
* you shouldn't need to select the translation option (or it should be a checkbox when you subscribe to the feed).
said on November 12, 2008 12:39 AM PDT:
There's a problem with auto-translate. Google Reader assumes that my preferred language is the language of the computer I am using. I am an English speaker in Switzerland, so Google Reader thinks I want everything translated to German, when I would rather have the feed translated FROM German to English. I can't find any way to correct this. It would be better if Reader looked to my preferences for my language of choice. Gmail displays everything in English, not German, but Reader displays all the navigational links in German. I hope that Reader follows Gmail's lead on this one. Or Reader should at least allow me to choose which language to translate to rather than trying to guess.
said on November 17, 2008 9:49 AM PDT:
The auto-translation service is not available in Traditional Chinese environment (English won't be auto-translated into T-Chinese).
yinnie said on December 6, 2008 4:05 PM PDT:
I need Thai.
said on March 9, 2009 1:21 AM PDT:
translation from english to simplified chinese doesn't work either
te verde said on May 25, 2009 7:13 AM PDT:
I think is geting better and better this kind of translation...just think where we were 10 years ago... think in the future..
You can see the same feature here at my site: http://www.nukedesigners.com. find feeds, translate feeds. Enjoy!
I roll through a lot of my blogs via Google Reader at work. Most of what I look at is related to my work, some of it isn't. If my network guys took an interest in me, what would they see? A lot of time in Google Reader, or every blog that Google Reader is set to tap? If they can see everything, is there a way to prevent that? Short of setting up a proxy server (though not ruled out as an option)... Thanks!
Caleb said on August 12, 2009 7:47 AM PDT:
This is a great feature, but I have a small complaint / suggestion similar to Job's above.
The target language is assumed to be the one I use the google interface in. This is usually NOT the language I would like feeds translated into. I use the Turkish interface for google, but google's Turkish translation engine is VERY rough. If I need feeds translated, I would prefer them translated into English which is a much better quality. I cannot do this without switching to the English user interface.
