According to the Book of Genesis there was a time when all people of the world spoke one language and were one people. At least that is what Wikipedia tells me in an article about the Tower of Babel. With an estimated 6,800 languages worldwide, such a time has long since passed, if it ever existed.
According to some estimates, Mexico alone has almost 300 languages spoken, but Papua-New Guinea wins with over 800 languages. So the logical and pressing question is, what do you do when you absolutely need to know what David Hasselhoff is doing right now in Germany? (I imagine that is where he is, since I hear that people there really like him).
Previously, the answer to this burning question was simple – "nothing." You would have to wait until he surfaced on the pages of the National Enquirer with Bat Boy to get your Hasselhoff fix. However, thanks to an enterprising Chrome developer, you now can find a German who tweets or updates his Facebook status with news on Hasselhoff’s daily comings and goings. The extension, Social Translate, will translate the messages for you.
The extension uses Google Translate’s translation engine. As a result, the translation quality is a bit limited for those more rarefied languages, but it seems to work seamlessly for everyday use for hundreds of languages.
So whether you are looking for news on Hasselhoff or you would like to follow the Dos Equis guy in the language of wherever he happens to be, you should check out Social Translate for Chrome.
Social Translate [at the Chrome extension library]
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