The Google Talkabout Blog announced the launch of an instant messenger bot that is an interpreter.

An instant messenger bot is a little computer program that accepts instant messages and automatically replies to them. AOL has the AIM Bot program for years, allowing developers to create these bots as they see fit. In any event, Google released a new bot that utilizes Google Translate and acts as your personal interpreter. Google currently has 29 different translation bots, including:

• ar2en
• bg2en
• de2en
• de2fr
• el2en
• en2ar
• en2de
• en2el
• en2es
• en2fr
• en2it
• en2ja
• en2ko
• en2nl
• en2ru
• en2zh
• es2en
• fi2en
• fr2de
• fr2en
• hi2en
• hr2en
• it2en
• ja2en
• ko2en
• nl2en
• ru2en
• uk2en
• ur2en
• zh2en

To set this up, set up a Google Talk buddy in the syntax of [from language]2[to language]@bot.talk.google.com. So, for French to German translation, talk to fr2de@bot.talk.google.com.

Here are examples of sample chats I had with my Google translate bots:

More coverage of this Google announcement can be found at Techmeme.

Related Topics: Google: Gmail | Google: Translate

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz