gTrans (short for Google Translator Interface) is a free, memory resident program that can do on-the-fly text translations using the Google engine.
It is a small program that can be accessed through the system tray and supports multiple-language translations.
Ever found yourself humming a song and wondering what the words to it would sound in, say, Spanish? No, me neither, but this would be a very easy thing to do with this program. Here’s a summary of the most notable features:
- System-tray access: clicking on an icon in the system tray will cause a window to pop-up where you can paste the text you would like to translate (or you can simply right click and select “translate from clipboard”) . Another window will appear with your translation; its as simple as that (see screenshot).
- Alternately, you can install gTrans as an Internet Explorer tool button for use straight from the browser.
- Can translate to/from the following six languages: English, Italian, German, Spanish, French, and Portuguese.
- If your text is not tranlsating properly you may have selected the wrong language; use Polyglot to identify the language you are working with.
This program is the kind of freeware that I love; free, useful, and scores very high on the coolness factor. And while I realize that the languages selected represent a significant chunk of population of the world, I cannot help but wish there was a way to add to add more (Russian is the one language that comes to mind). The Google translator webpage, in fact, offers a number of other languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Korean, and Japanese, but these are still in BETA; I am guessing that these will also be incorporated in a future version of gTrans.
This is great tool that can potentially prove very useful, especially if you do a lot of on-the-fly translation.
Version tested: 2.5 Platinum
Compatibility: WinAll; note that there are sperate versions for Windows XP vs. other versions of Windows. Found no info on Vista compatibility.
Go to the program home page to download the latest version (approx 2.65 megs).
