Last night I was away from my computer, so I accessed Twitter with my Blackberry. As the updates came through, I noticed that at least half of them were in different languages. Of course I couldn't read them.
However, if I had been at my computer I could have translated them using a nice little extension called Google Translation Bar. It would be even nicer if there existed such an application for the Blackberry, but I digress.
If you haven't used this translation tool, let me explain. First you need the Google Chrome web browser. You can find it at http://www.google.com/chrome.
Once that is downloaded, go to https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/innppdgohibodgdhonllhfggjddbplgb.
This should take you to the Google Translation Bar extension for downloading.
Once downloaded, it will put a blue icon in the upper toolbar of the Google Chrome browser. When you get to a page that you would like to translate, simply click on the icon and choose the language to which you'd like it translated. Click "Translate" and presto, it's done!
For instance, one of the recent tweets that came through read:
今病院に来ています。
And in Hebrew it looks like:
זה מדהים כמה שינויים במצב הרוח שלי פעם את השמש יוצאת
Amazing!!!
I think this would be a perfect tool for foreign language classes. It looks like there are about 52 languages available. Any one of them can be translated into any of the others.
Believe me, I would have loved this application during all those Spanish classes I took in high school. Reading Don Quixote my senior year would have been a lot more enjoyable.
So, try it. Have fun with it. You might even learn something.
If this particular extension is not to your liking, there are other translation tools available at: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/.
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