Born as another "20 percent project" at Google, the on the fly translation of feed content readers was recently announced on the Official Google Reader blog and will make it easier for users all around the globe to access and better understand regular updates from websites producing content in languages other than the user's native tongue.

Of course, the feature relies on the existing infrastructure provided by Google Translator, the company's automatic translation tool that makes use of both traditional translation algorithms and Web searches to find the most appropriate match for every term of phrase: although many believe that Translator is not quite as sophisticated as other competing tools — such as Yahoo's Babelfish — and that the grammar or translated text is sometimes far from perfect, there is no doubt that the end result is understandable and enables readers to, to the very least, get the gist of a text that might have otherwise resulted impossible to decipher.

When testing the new translation feature on feeds originally written in languages such as Chinese or Vietnamese, the feeling is as if a whole new world was opening up, as pointed out by Brett Bavar, a "20% volunteer" and glottology expert, in the Google blog post:

"Believe it or not, the web truly is world-wide. That means there is a lot of interesting content out there in languages other than your own. You might have missed out on this content in the past, but now, with automatic translation in Reader, you don't have to miss a thing [...] Next time you find an interesting feed in another language, just subscribe to it as normal in Reader. When you view the feed in Reader, check off "Translate into my language" in the feed settings, and the feed will be immediately translated for you."

The translation process is indeed quite fast, certainly quicker than the Web page translation service: in fact, instead of having to reload the entire HTML page (including graphics), translating feeds means that all images, video or other media content is absent, which accounts for a much better performing translation service. This, together with the fact that many websites feature the entire post rather than a preview in their RSS feeds, makes for a very efficient source of information from blogs and websites all around the globe.

To make things even easier, the translation settings for the various feeds are being saved automatically, which means that users only need to select the translating option once for each feed. Languages supported include anything from Arab to Chinese and Tagalog, all those that are supported by Google Translate, whose updates will from now on be immediately reflected in the new Google Reader.

Surely, this is a welcome addition to Google's RSS feed reader platform: TechCrunch shows appreciation for the translation quality even from traditionally rich and hard to translate languages such as Japanese, while Mashable even talks about the potential fall of a cultural and historical divide between the Middle East and the Western world. Webmasters will now have the possibility to have their content read by a potentially much larger audience and, to some measure, to monetize their content based on its quality and significance rather than the language in which it was written.

When keeping in consideration the way in which blogs have revolutionized the Web in the last few years, the impact of this new addition becomes clearer: hopefully, with time the translations quality will be good enough to allow for seamless and rich communication of ideas throughout the world, regardless of the language used, making the World Wide Web more internationalized and democratic than ever.