By Seth Rosenblatt
Thursday, July 02 2009 11:27 AM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/internet/0,39044908,62055639,00.htm

Toolbars have long been an effective way for software publishers to add several features to a browser at once, and the Google Toolbar has long been among the most popular of these. Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer has now introduced revamped translation tools, giving users one-click powers of conversion over many languages.

The toolbar now detects the user's default language setting, and using the Translate button will attempt to convert the page to it. Clicking a link will automatically translate the new page, as long as its part of the same domain as the original. Forty-one languages are supported so far, from Spanish, French, Italian, and German to Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Hindi, Ukranian and Vietnamese.

Not all words on a page will be translated, but from my tests that seems limited only to text that's been embedded in logos and other art. If one requires a lot of on-the-fly translation, this could be a major time saver.

The feature has not been extended to Google Toolbar for Firefox, although Google said on its blog post announcing the feature that it hopes to implement it soon.

This article was first published as a blog post on CNET News.