As the diversity of our communities continues to grow so does the need for tools to help all of us communicate. Thankfully, there continues to be progress in the computer based translation sites as they move from word by word to more advanced artificial intelligence based tools. Following are some sites to get you started.
The goal of computer translators is to give one the 'gist' of the text, not an accurate word by word translation. Not perfect, but a good starting place.
Also known as the Babblefish site (from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy). Here you can type or paste in text and have it translated. A very useful feature is the ability to type/paste in a webpage address (URL) and have all the text on a page translated while maintaining all the graphics and links.
All computer based translations make mistakes. This site has human translators who will verify/correct the machine translation for a fee.
Try it at http://world.altavista.com/ Try pasting in www.willamette.edu/jtenny/ into the URL spot.
Translates between English and the romance languages (and back), including websites. Has other translation services and software available.
Try it at http://www.freetranslation.com/
Similar to the others, but this site translates between all the romance languages, not just with English as the common language.
Try it at http://translation.lycos.com/
This one translates between Arabic and English. It lets you sent the context of the message (agriculture, legal, medical, etc.). You will need the character set installed to get the full impact.
Try it at http://tarjim.ajeeb.com/ajeeb/default.asp?lang=1
This site has connections to most of the above and a few others.
Try it at http://translation.langenberg.com/
This site provides the ability to translated while in chat rooms or bulletin board/discussions. Very useful for person to person communication. The vendor webpage is http://www.multicity.com/ where you can get started with creating your own chatrooms and threaded discussions.
Try ones that I've created at MultiCity Sample