I’ve also seen a number of young people in forums from other countries with poor English. This would allow them to read English emails in their own language if the vocabulary is too challenging.

Also as we come a little closer to having a “universal translator” it may become unnecessary for people to personally translate their messages into the language of the recipient.

I had a school senior project in which we collaborated with French college students. Their emails were in both French and English. Presumeably the French part was written first because it was most natural, the they translated into English for our benefit. When We sent them emails though, we didn’t bother rewriting them in French, because English is expected to be known everywhere. The gmail translate feature could be great here.

While most European countries speak English as a first or second language this could really help bridge gaps with Oriental people online. Try following a niche community like an alternative sport, high scoring in a rare video game, or obscure music/art and you’ll quickly find that there are online communities scattered in different languages that either don’t talk to each other, or don’t even know the other exists because of search engine limitations. Once you do find your new foreign friend, how do you talk to them?

Rat had a good point concerning the purpose of labs. At any rate, watch what you say about Google, they know where you live!

Generally, I agree with the original post. While the translation service is useful for random pieces of text or for web pages, it’s not as useful for emails. When someone sends an email to me, they want me to read it, so they would send it in some language that I would understand. If they don’t put in some effort to give me something I can read, then why should I put the effort to translate it?

Aren’t you curious about that? I know I do :D