Gmail offers free translation

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 3 (UPI) -- Google says its new free language translation feature in its Gmail service is an attempt to eliminate the language barrier for e-mailers around the world.

The feature is intended to provide a seamless and user-friendly way to communicate by e-mail with people who don't know a single word of a Gmail user's language and vice versa.

Automatic message translation has been residing in Gmail's "Google Labs" section for quite some time and now Google has decided to make it a native Gmail feature, TG Daily reported Wednesday.

"We heard immediately from Google Apps for Business users that this was a killer feature for working with local teams across the world," Gmail product manager Jeff Chin wrote in the official Gmail blog.

"Some people just wanted to easily read newsletters from abroad. Another person wrote in telling us how he set up his mom's Gmail to translate everything into her native language, thus saving countless explanatory phone calls," Chin said.

Users will see a "Translate message" button within their Gmail account, which when clicked will automatically detect the language of the message and convert it into the language the user chooses.

An option can set up Gmail to automatically detect when a message is in a language other than the user's default language and can translate them without any action needed from the user, TG Daily reported.