Google on Tuesday beefed up its Google Chrome browser with instant machine language translation without the need for other applications like Yahoo's Babel Fish, and improved ways to manage privacy by controlling which sites can leave cookies.
Google unveiled the new features to the beta version of its Google Chrome browser at its Google Chrome blog.
The machine language translation function allows users to get foreign-language Web pages translated into their own language, as determined by their preferred language setting in the Web browser, wrote Wieland Holfelder, engineering director at Google in Munich, Germany.
The new feature works by first automatically detecting that a Web page being viewed is in a different language other than the user's preferred language, and then prompting the user with the question, "Would you like to translate it?"
If the user clicks on "yes" or "oui" or "si" or whatever it would be in the user's preferred language, the text on the Web page is automatically translated, as shown in a YouTube video embedded on the blog.
The translation is automatically done using Google's own translation technology without the need for browser extensions or plug-ins.
In the YouTube video, Jay Civelli, one of the Google engineers who developed the feature, admitted the translation is not perfect. For instance, in the video, Civelli had a Korean language Web page about a new cell phone translated into English, and one paragraph came out as, "This guy plays this year with the indicators of domestic agricultural Android doelgeotin as I hope I have better advice from successful. Google's interest by many bloggers, but the wind, having andeuroyideuponen."
The second new feature in the Google Chrome beta was designed to increase privacy by allowing users to determine how browser cookies, images, JavaScript, plug-ins, and pop-ups are handled on a site-by-site basis.
The privacy settings are done through Chrome's Options dialog.
For instance, users can determine which Websites are allowed to leave cookies on their PC, preventing all other sites from doing so.
