Facebook has launched an award system for translators, where those who translate for the social network can get special icons as they accomplish specific milestones. Awards are grouped into into the categories of voting participation, words published, and translations published.

Google Dictionary is in the spotlight because Google is now using it for its "definition" link on search results pages for word searches. Previously Google pointed users to Answers.com.

Google has launched a new "Translated Search" tool as one of the search engines search options. Google’s search options can currently be accessed by clicking "show options" on any results page, once a search has been performed (although you may not even have to do that soon). The idea is that searchers can more easily find and read content written in other languages.

Google has launched some new features for Google Translate, while altering the look of the service. In addition to redesigning the site, the new features are aimed at making it faster and easier to translate text between 2,550 language pairs. Google Translate works for 51 languages, representing 98% of Internet users, according to the company.

One new feature is the ability to translate instantly. There used to be a "translate" button, but now it just translates your text as you type it.

Google has released a couple of new Labs projects. The first one is called Script converter, and the second one is called Related Links.

The Script Converter Lab lets users read the text of any script in the supported languages, which currently consist of:

- Hindi
- Bengali
- English
- Gujarati
- Kannada
- Malayalam
- Marathi
- Nepali
- Tamil
- Telugu

All you have to do is enter text or a web address in the box, select the language you want to read it in, and press convert.

Google announced today that it has added 285 languages to the Google Translator Toolkit. It now has a total of 345, and Google says it can translate between 10,664 language pairs. The interface itself is availalbe in 35 languages.

Facebook has added Latin to its list of languages that the social network now supports (there are more than 70 of them). Azeri, Faroese, Georgian and Nepali have also been launched.

Facebook has announced translations for Facebook Connect, which a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews, "simplifies and streamlines the process of translating a website into any of the more than 65 different languages Facebook currently supports."

"By opening the same framework Facebook used to translate its own site, passionate communities in countries around the world can translate some of the best websites and applications into their native languages," she says.

Google announced today that it has added nine new languages to Google Translate. That brings the total number of languages supported up to 51, as well as 2,550 language pairs, including all 23 official EU languages.

Language barriers can make communicating the simplest things painful; no one wants to do a sort of hokey pokey just to find the nearest restroom.  However, Google’s attempting to leap way past basic human needs and help with complicated manuscripts by introducing translation technology to Google Docs.

Today Google made a couple of announcements involving the expansion of offerings into more languages. They’ve announced that the new optimized SERP pages for iPhones, Android devices, and feature phones are now available in over 60 countries and 38 languages. In addition, the company has announced an advanced translation feature in the newest release of Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer.

The Mobile SERPs

LinkedIn is available in the English, Spanish, French, and German languages, although users can post their profiles in over 40 different languages. The company would like to offer its services in more languages though, and is calling upon its user bases to help it out with that.

Google announced that Google Translate now offers translation between the English and Persian (Farsi) languages. With all of the news discussion from within and all over the world surrounding Iran, the company presumably felt that having this available would be beneficial for those trying to stay informed.

However it fares in other respects, it may not be long before Bing becomes the favorite search engine of foreign language students.  Microsoft Translator now provides Instant Answers through Bing, and the system works in an intuitive and impressive manner.

Google has announced the launch of the Google Translator toolkit, an editor designed to give translators an easy means of bringing the "human touch" to machine translation, which everybody knows is often flawed.

Today Google announced the integration of automatic translation technology directly into Gmail. This integration comes in the form of a lab, so it will have to be activated.

When you receive an email in a language that is not your native one, Gmail will help you translate it in one click. The feature looks like this:

Google says it can now translate between the languages read by 98% of Internet users with Google Translate. The total of languages is up to 41. The most recent additions include:

- Turkish
- Thai
- Hungarian
- Estonian