Google Translate

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on March 07, 2010

Google Translate is a handy add-on for Chrome that allows users to translate Web pages between a wide variety of languages. Although it handles some languages better than others, in general, it's a quick and easy way to get translations of fairly high quality.

The add-on integrates well with Chrome, appearing as a small icon to the right of the address bar. Users can click on this to access a sleek menu at the top of the browser window, but the application can optionally detect when you're visiting a Web page not in your default language and offer to translate automatically. Translating couldn't be easier; users simply select the desired output language--there are 42 to choose from--and the page is translated within a few seconds. We especially like that the translated text appears right on the Web page, leaving the page's formatting intact; it's exactly like reading the original page, but in the language of your choice. Users can optionally set Google Translate to automatically translate Web pages not in their default language without prompting, which is handy to have if, for example, you're reading a foreign newspaper and want to view multiple articles and have them translated as soon as they load. As with all automated translators, the translations aren't perfect, and we had better results translating from Spanish than from Japanese. Still Google Translate is the best option we've found for fast, well-integrated Web translation.

Google Translate is free. It installs and uninstalls without issues. We recommend this add-on to all users.