Google Chrome Translate Plugin

Extension and plugin development for the Google Chrome web browser is finally taking off with the inclusion of an extension engine in the latest development version of the Google browser.

Chrome users had to start the browser with a command line parameter before if they wanted to enable extensions. It is now more comfortable to work with extensions as that is no longer necessary.

Even that comfortable that it beats the Firefox web browser's handling in some aspects. The main difference is the restart of the browser that is needed in Firefox but not in Google Chrome.

Update: Firefox supports so called restartless extensions as well now.

Bubble Translate is a translation plugin for the Google Chrome browser. It uses the Google Translate service to provide on-page translations of selected text. It is recommended to configure the plugin after its installation.

A click on the T icon in the Chrome status bar opens the settings where the default language needs to be set (default is Afrikaans). Other options there include changing the translation hotkey and the color scheme of the translated text.

The default hotkey to translate items on a website is Ctrl. All that it takes to translate part of a website is to press the Ctrl key and select the text that you want translated with the computer mouse.

It takes a moment before the translated version of the text (translated into the language selected in the configuration of the extension) shows up in a bubble next to the selected text.

The extension is an early development stage. This could explain that it sometimes took more than one try to get the translation of a selected text in the browser. Bubble Translate for Google Chrome is available at its Google Code project website.

Update: We have removed the link pointing to the extension as it is not working anymore. It was last updated in September 2010, and while it is still possible to install it, you will notice that it won't translate selected text anymore.

We suggest you use the official Google Translate extension for Chrome instead if you want to translate full web pages into a language of your choosing -- which can be different from your system's language -- or Translate Selection if you want to translate paragraphs or individual words instead.

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