In May of 2009, Gmail launched an experimental version of Automatic Message Translation in Gmail Labs and now Gmail has announced that the feature is graduating. The new feature, which is expected to roll out to all Gmail users over the next several days, makes communicating with those who speak a different language much easier.
Now, when a Gmail user receives an email in a foreign language, the user can easily translate the unknown language to their native language with a single click. For example, by simply selecting the “Translate message” option in the header of the email, an English-speaking businessman can easily read an email that was sent in Japanese. The feature can be further customized to the needs of the individual Gmail user with options that automatically translate messages for some users and another option to prevent translation for multi-lingual individuals.
Jeff Chin, the Product Manager for Google Translate, highlighted the practicality of this feature with several real-world examples:
“We heard immediately from Google Apps for Business users that this was a killer feature for working with local teams across the world. Some people just wanted to easily read newsletters from abroad. 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). I continue to use it to participate in discussions with the global Google offices I often visit.”
Along with the message translation feature, Title Tweaks and Smart Mute also graduated from Google Labs. Title Tweaks changes the text in the browser tab to make it easier for Gmail users to determine when they have a new email and Smart Mute helps users filter “noisy” email threads.
Image & Article Source: Official Gmail Blog
