Mountain View, California — Relentlessly striving to minimize the language barrier between people of different countries, global search engine behemoth Google is making it easier for Gmail users to communicate with others who speak a different language with an automatic message translator. The web giant early this week announced on the Official Gmail Blog, that the Gmail development team has transitioned automatic message translation from the experimental section in Google Labs to a finished product integrated into the public version of Gmail.
The latest feature will be gradually released to all Gmail users over the rest of the week, and when you receive a message in a language other than your own, you will now be able to translate messages written in another language directly from the Gmail interface. Interestingly, with the new feature, you will also be able to reply to emails in the sender’s native language.
Positioned within the header of the email messages, users will effortlessly discover a new “Translate message” link. After the link has been clicked, the message will instantly translate the message into the user’s native language (see image below) as dictated by the Language option within Gmail Settings.
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Image Credit: (Znet) Click to enlarge….
Automatic Message Translation as a Gmail feature has been in the works since 2009 as Gmail Labs project. Back then, Google engineers were not quite certain how people would use it.
Though the feedback was encouraging, including from Google Apps for Business users who found the feature was useful for working with teams across the world, according to the company. “Some people just wanted to easily read newsletters from abroad,” wrote Jeff Chin, product manager for Google Translate in a blog post on Tuesday.
This latest attribute is particularly worthwhile for users with friends and family that are residing in another country. “We heard immediately from Google Apps for Business users that this was a killer feature for working with local teams across the world,” Chin wrote in a blog post. “Another person wrote in telling us how he set up his mom’s Gmail to translate everything into her native language, thus saving countless explanatory phone calls (he thanked us profusely).”
It appeared that message translation was very popular indeed, so Chin continued on, “We decided it was time to move forward from Gmail Labs and move into the real world. Over the next few days, everyone who uses Gmail will be getting the convenience of translation added to their email.”
Furthermore, for fun or work, users can choose to have messages in a language automatically translated in their specific languages by selecting “Always Translate,” or they can click for translation using a translate message option. Those who are bi-lingual can disable translations for a particular language.
Beyond adding the ability to automatically translate messages within the Gmail interface, two other Gmail labs are rolling out across the email service: title tweaks and smart mute. Title tweaks changes the text in the browser tab to let you more easily see if you have new messages. The tab will now display “Inbox (20),” for example, instead of “Gmail–Inbox (20).” Smart Mute, meanwhile, helps you keep long email threads that are not relevant out of your inbox.