HOWTO: Carry on a multi-lingual conversation using Google Talk

I've always been a fan of Google's language tools, especially when I'm trying to find out how to say a phrase in Spanish. Now Google has built a bot out of the tool so that you can actually chat to it using Google Talk (or any jabber client) and receive the translation in real time.

Here's how to use it: Simply add en2es@bot.talk.google.com to your friend list and chat with the bot to automatically translate from english to spanish. Google has a list of currently supported language codes, but you can always try out a code to see if it has been implemented. (The current list is ar2en, de2en, de2fr, el2en, en2ar, en2de, en2el, en2es, en2fr, en2it, en2ja, en2ko, en2nl, en2ru, en2zh, es2en, fr2de, fr2en, it2en, ja2en, ko2en, nl2en, ru2en, zh2en)

Now, let's say that you are trying to talk to a Spanish speaking person over chat and neither of you are particularly good at the other language. You carry on a perfectly usable conversation by following these steps:

1. Add en2es@bot.talk.google.com to your friends list.
2. Add the reverse, i.e. es2en@bot.talk.google.com as a friend.
3. Invite both the bots to a group chat. Also, add your spanish speaking friend to the chat.

Now, everything that is said in English will be translated to spanish by the en2es bot. Also, everything that's said in Spanish will be translated automatically by es2en. (Don't worry, there will not be any infinite loops)

This is fully scalable - add all kinds of other language bots (and the reverse bots) to have a wickedly cool group chat!

Happy chatting!

Labels: chat, google, language, translation