The latest version of Google Chrome, build 5.0.317.2, brings a new feature to improve the browsing experience when visiting foreign websites. It includes an automatic page translation tool which detects the page language and, if it differs from your browser language, offers to translate it to your language using Google Translate.

When Chrome offers you to translate a site, a blue bar will show up in your Chrome window:

When you click the Translate button, it takes a few seconds, and your page should appear in another language. I tried this on several websites with several languages, but it never really worked. Always some parts, like links and headlines were translated, but most of the text stayed in its original language.

Other languages are working, though:

As you can see, this feature is still very experimental, but since I’m using the alpha (dev) version of Google Chrome, I can’t expect every new feature to work perfectly. Google will surely fix this issue until the release of Google Chrome 5 final, and it will make browsing easier, as you will be able to view a lot more websites in languages you don’t understand, without having to mess with pasting the text to your favorite translation tool or guessing what it may say.

If you want to try the new feature (and thus have Chrome dev version), switch to the Dev channel here. Also check out the AdThwart extension to block ads in Google Chrome or my tutorial on how to make Google Chrome anonymous.