Gmail now translates your emails

Google graduated three new features from Gmail labs, one of which translates your emails that are in other languages. According to a post by Jeff Chin, Product Manager, Google Translate on the Gmail blog, the team was curious as to how users would utilize the automatic message translation they launched in Gmail labs in 2009. They heard back from a lot of Google Apps for Business users saying that the feature was in fact quite desired for those working with local teams around the world and also from people who wanted to read newsletters from various parts of the world. Another person wrote in to Google saying that he set up the Translate feature for his mother's e-mail, thereby avoiding long explanatory phone calls.

Gmail now translates your e-mail

Message translation ended up being quite the popular Gmail Labs feature, therefore, they graduated it from Labs to the real world. Over the next few days, Gmail will be rolling out the ability to translate within email to everyone. If you get an e-mail in a language, other than what your default is, then you can click on the "Translate message" tab in the header on the top of the message. If you don't need certain languages to be translated, then you can choose to not translate them. Or, if you would always like messages to be translated, then you can set the feature to Always translate. If you don't see the "translate message" tab for some reason or accidentally turn off translation for a particular language, then you can click on the down arrow next to Reply at the top-right of the message pane and select the Translate message option in the drop-down.

Two other features that Gmail graduated are a small title change and Smart Mute. The title change is small. Instead of reading ""Gmail - Inbox (20) - user@example.com.” in your browser tab, you will now see, "Inbox (20) - user@example.com - Gmail". The point of this title change is to help you more clearly see, if you have any unread messages and how many you have. Gmail has also made improvements to Smart Mute so you can help keep 'noisy', unwanted threads out of your inbox.

In addition to graduating these features from Labs, Gmail will be retiring some other features. Features you will no longer see are: Old Snakey, Mail Goggles, Mouse Gestures, Hide Unread Counts, Move Icon Column, Inbox Preview, Custom Date Formats and SMS in Chat gadget. Gmail says that they're not retiring the SMS in Chat feature, just the gadget it comes in. Stay tuned to your Gmail inbox, you should see translation options soon.