Monday, Aug. 23, 2004
Freetranslation.com
Copy and paste a Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese or Russian word or phrase into one field and the English translation appears almost instantly in another. It also works the other way: the site translates English into one of 10 different languages, including two forms of Chinese (though for this, you'd probably need to install what's called a "language pack" so your PC can display the characters). Don't push things too far; longer passages quickly reveal the program's limitations, so if your text is going to end up in a business letter, you might want to put a human translator on the case. The site will provide one, for a fee.