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Google Friend Connect gets comment translation

The service can now translate user comments, no matter what language you're in. It can even take multiple comments in several languages and unify them.

Josh Lowensohn Former Senior Writer
Josh Lowensohn joined CNET in 2006 and now covers Apple. Before that, Josh wrote about everything from new Web start-ups, to remote-controlled robots that watch your house. Prior to joining CNET, Josh covered breaking video game news, as well as reviewing game software. His current console favorite is the Xbox 360.
Josh Lowensohn

Google's Friend Connect just got a really neat new feature: comment translation. It can now unify the language of any comment thread, turning any and all comments into one language. This means that if you have one post in Mandarin, another in Spanish, and yet another in Russian, you can click an option to read them all in the same language.

Google is using its own Translate API to do the dirty work, which means whatever unintentionally bad translations it would do on the Translate site will happen on comment threads. Friend Connect users who already have the tool installed on their blogs or sites do not have to upgrade; Google is pushing out the new features with the same bit of code.

Here's a quick video on how it works: