As you're browsing through the comments that others have left on your favorite sites, have you ever come across a comment written in a language you don't understand? (We've seen a few of them here on the Social Web Blog.) Today we're introducing a new feature for the Google Friend Connect comments gadget that will help to address this problem: translations.

Now, if you see a comment in a foreign language, click on "Translate" in the lower left corner of the gadget and select your language. All comments that aren't written in your language of choice will be translated and highlighted in yellow. If you want to revert back to the original text, simply select "No Translation" from the same menu.


For the World Wide Fund For Nature, this is a great addition to their Earth Hour website. This global campaign, supported by 4,000 cities in 88 different countries, involves millions of people from around the world helping to conserve energy. Now visitors to the website can leave comments in their native language and use the translation feature to engage in meaningful discussions with the rest of the community.

Watch the video below to learn more about the comments gadget:


If you already have the comments gadget on your site, you don't need to do anything. This feature will automatically be added to your gadget. If you want to add a comments gadget on your site, go to google.com/friendconnect to get started. You can also learn more about this gadget and other Friend Connect features in the features gallery.

Post by Tony Scelfo, Software Engineer