IMTranslator is a free web-based translating tool which offers you not only fairly accurate translations and transliterations in more than fifty languages, but also a neat variety of editing and word-processing tools. Together with these goodies, you will find spell-checkers, dictionaries, virtual keyboards, and even an online TTS (text-to-speech) engine.
The program (or should I say, this plug-in) comes with an interface of its own, but the whole translating process is performed online, so you will always need an Internet connection to translate your texts. (In fact, when launched, IMTranslator opens a small - maybe too small - screen which is nothing but a new window of your Internet browser). The program has its limitations, as it will not accept texts longer than 1,000 characters, nor will allow you to add new words or expressions to its dictionaries, which, by the way, are the only ones you can use. But being a free tool, I think the service it provides to cover your short and quick translation needs is extremely generous.
The quality of the translations (in the languages this reviewer could understand) is certainly better of what you reasonably expect from a non-human translator - the translated texts make sense, which is more than can say of other translation tools. Those languages using non-roman characters can be transliterated, useful to avoid problems related to the characters set when sent via e-mail. It is worth noting the possibility of linking directly from IMTranslator to another web-based service which will read your texts out loud using TTS technology.
All in all, a neat, small, and free tool that covers your translation needs of not-too-complicated and not-too-long texts extremely well.
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