The latest hype: new Google Talk translation bots

Google has just introduced a new translation feature to its Google Talk chat client. The company released 24 language translation bots (list of languages available here) which can quickly translate a phrase or paragraph for you, and even be added to group chats to act as real-time translators. All you have to do is add a chosen bot to your Gmail contact list in order to communicate with the bot or use it in a group chat.

As you may imagine, the translation is not perfect. As arstechnica.com reports, in tests across various languages including English, French, and German, the bots at times exhibited surprising translation abilities for things like colloquialisms, but dropped the ball other times with basic "hello, how are you" statements like. By extension, these bots are only as good as Google's translation dictionaries, which some feel can leave much to be desired. Google Talk users would probably generally agree with this statement, as to be checked here. But sometimes it’s fun to talk to a translation bot (and most of the times useful as well, especially in simple conversations), like with the Russian one, which apparently gets the swear words right.