I’ve been using the Google translate button on my google toolbar for quite some time, it’s got a whole list of languages that it can attempt a translation from.

Look at how it translates this Norwegian language blog when I click on “translate to English”:

The original page

After translation

Ok, so it’s not perfect but I’m sure you’ll agree that it is a lot easier to figure out what’s being said!

It means I can respond to a post if I have something to add and it always seems to surprise the blog owner that I could understand their article!

I’ve used this a lot more recently due to CommentLuv being picked up by a lot of foreign language blogs like CommentLuv users Andymse in Indonesia and My Lovely Blue Sky in Colorado but written in Malay Chinese

There are German, French, Spanish, Japanese and other language blogs that can be translated by the Google toolbar.

You can even add an option to show a translation from English to a language of your choice when you hover over words, I choose a new language to translate to now and then so when I do my normal web work, I absorb a language via osmosis…. it’s true!, I had it set on German for a few weeks and when i was on a German site I instinctively knew which was the about page link and which button meant “Support”

Installation

Easy peasy, just download the Google toolbar for your browser.
Visit the settings/options

And choose the language you want to learn by Osmosis!