A few days ago, Google released a new version of their translation tool at http://translate.google.com/

If you have used Google Translate earlier, you will have recognized that the translations were mostly awful and that bad that it was hard  to understand them at all. This new version improves the quality of translations significantly; now you can actually use it to read websites or texts in foreign languages.

It also adds a dictionary function: Just type in the word you need and it will give you different meanings. Moreover, by clicking on “detailed dictionary”, you have the possibility to see examples of how to use this word in a phrase and listen to the translations.

The real-time translation is also a quite nice feature: You can just type in a sentence, and as you type, it will try to translate it. This reminds me of the live translation called Rosy used in a promotional video for Google Wave. Rosy currently isn’t available for Google Wave users, but the new Google Translate may actually be a testing ground.