Do you ever wish that you could speak their language? (But were too busy or lazy to learn it?) Well, no worries my friend, I have another cool tool recommendation for you – Google Talk.
Okay, before you say, “I have Yahoo Instant Messenger, or Skype or AIM or (insert IM Chat client here). I don’t need another one.”
Well… maybe you don’t. If you are however looking to recruit cadidates overseas, here is a nifty little trick that will make you fluent in 10 languages in 10 seconds (or less).
1. Download a copy of Google Talk. (Keep your money! Its a freebie. Click here to download it.)
2. This is what Google Talk looks like. (Well, minus the blurred out names. I added that in for the sake of privacy.)
3. Once you have your Google Talk client on your desktop, simply click the “Add” button.
4. A small window will appear. Add in “en2zh@bot.talk.google.com” as shown below. This is the email of a Googlebot that translates english to Chinese. Once you have the email address added, click the “Next” button.
5. Another window opens up to let you know that your friend has been invited. In this case, your “friend” is the Chinese speaking Googlebot.
6. Once you have added the Googlebot to your friends list, you will notice on your Google Talk that it is online (as indicated by the green light beside the name).
7. From this point, simply click on the Googlebot name and chat with it. It will automatically reply with the Chinese equivalent of what you typed.
“Clever Jim,” you say, “But how would I use it?”
“Well, duh,” I reply, “Use it like this…”
A. Find a resume of someone you want to talk to in China. Say they have a good resume (or at least an interesting one) and you want to connect with them right away. Send them an invite to join you on Google Talk by clicking the “Add Button” (as shown above).
Better yet, if their email is listed on their resume, contact them that way and ask them to connect with you via Google Talk for an informal chat about your opportunity. (Be sure to send them a link where they can download the IM Client.)
B. When they send you a chat message, reply back in English. If they do not speak English, send a quick message to the Chinese speaking Googlebot and cut and paste its translation to the person you are attempting to recruit. Get it? Good.
No machine translation is 100% accurate, so you might want your first message to them to be, “Please be patient with me. My Chinese is not very good.”
And when they reply in Chinese, filter their response through the Chinese speaking Googlebot. Simple.
The Googlebot speaks more than just Chinese! Here is a list of languages it translates as well as the corresponding email addresses that you may want to add to your Google Talk as well.
- ARGENTINA to ENGLISH - ar2en@bot.talk.google.com
- GERMAN to ENGLISH - de2en@bot.talk.google.com
- SPANISH to ENGLISH – es2en@bot.talk.google.com
- FRENCH to ENGLISH – fr2en@bot.talk.google.com
- ITALIAN to ENGLISH – it2en@bot.talk.google.com
- JAPANESE to ENGLISH – ja2en@bot.talk.google.com
- KOREAN to ENGLISH – ko2en@bot.talk.google.com
- NETHERLANDS to ENGLISH – nl2en@bot.talk.google.com
- RUSSIAN to ENGLISH – ru2en@bot.talk.google.com
If you found this useful, let me know by leaving a comment.
Happy Hunting!
Jim Stroud
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Jim,
This is a very cool tool. Unfortunately, when I click on the bot email and start typing away, it just repeats what I’m saying in English no matter which bot I click on. All of the bots have are available. Any suggestions?
Hi Jim, figured out that some of your links are not right, as Bill said.
I needed english to italian.. so it2en@ does not work… but en2it@ does.
Just in case you wanted to update your post with the variations.
Thanks for the awesome tip!!!
Yes, it works also the other way.
en2es@bot.talk.google.com
en2fr@bot.talk.google.com
en2it@bot.talk.google.com
en2ja@bot.talk.google.com
en2ko@bot.talk.google.com
en2nl@bot.talk.google.com
en2ru@bot.talk.google.com
Google’s ability to articulate never ceases to amaze
That’s awesome it translates on the fly like that.
Wow! Now THIS is a great tip. I’ll be pointing folks to this post, for SURE.
Too bad it doesn’t work in Google Chat in the Gmail website. Or does it and I’m just not doing it right?
Anyway, GREAT TIP!
Are some of the commenters just dense? (Or was the article updated?)
Obviously the it2en@bot.talk.google.com isn’t going to translate from English to Italian. The article was very clear that it was “ITALIAN to ENGLISH”
I understand if figuring out the English to Italian link was too difficult for you guys, but surely you realized it wouldn’t be exactly the same as the “ITALIAN to ENGLISH” link, right?
This is a follow up to Jim Gate’s comment. This tip does work with Google Chat in the Gmail website. At the bottom of the Gchat, click the add button. A screen will come up where you send email invites. Copy and paste the different bots that you want to use and click “send invites.” Once the bots show up in your chat box, you can go into your contacts lists and rename them whatever you want (ie. “English to Spanish”). Hope this helps! Jim– thanks for a great tip though. This is my new favorite gmail tip.
You need to get an English to Persian bot.
Thanks
actually, ar2en@bot.talk.google.com translates from ARABIC to English, *not* ARGENTINA.