I have been using Google Translate for about two years now, and I have to say that, agreeing with Rod, it is a quick and useful solution.
This automated translation is not comparable to the result of a professional translator, it will never be even close to that.
But it has a few advantages for sure:
- It is simple and fast
- Gets you there, it is useful
- It can translate to many languages
The third reason is the one that keeps me subscribed to this tool. We have visitors from many different countries and we want them to be able to "understand" what our site is about. Not in a sharp and clean manner, alright, but god enough to get the wheel going.
You see, there are lots of people out there browsing the Internet that don't speak English ;-) ...nor Spanish, nor German, nor French, nor Italian... etcetera.
I am pasting below a small script that Google has withdrawn from circulation but still works, and will continue to, most likely:
<script src="http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/translatemypage.xml&up_source_language=en&w=160&h=60&title=&border=&output=js"></script>
Pay attention to the "source_language" switch :-)
HTH.
Saludos!
Edit: @Sharlyn, you have to paste the script into an HTML module. You may add comments or normal HTML text around the script, it should work okay.