Gmail Message Translation

Here is a tech tip I just sent out to my staff:



I wanted to share a neat feature that Gmail Labs offers us for communicating with our students, parents, and community. You have the ability to turn on "Message Translation" which will use Google Translate to convert a message from another language to English (or to another language of your choice). Here are the simple steps to turn this on in Gmail (link).
Of course, it isn't as good as having a live native speaker translate for you, but it will allow you to receive messages in 58 different languages (and growing) and it translated. I showed this to a group of parents last night and they were empowered with the idea that they could reach out, in a language where they are comfortable writing, to someone at school. Even understanding that it might not be perfect, but getting a general idea across was possible, brought tears to one mother's eyes.
Please take a moment to set it up and ask a student or co-worker to help you try it out. 

Is anyone else using this? Successes? Drawbacks?

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