Tech Shout!

Google has taken another step forward in its mission to make the world’s information universally accessible. The search engine giant has just launched a new test feature that automatically translates Internet search requests and results in 12 languages.

The Google Translate feature enables users to search for a keyword or search phrase in languages that you may not even speak or understand and get a quick overview of Web sites in other languages with the help of machine translate.

Users can then click on a link and have the entire Web page translated through a service that Google had already been offering.

Google vice president of engineering Udi Manber said in a statement that this new service would further boost their aim to make the Web more accessible and universal.

He added, “We have been working on translating the entire Web to all languages. The results are probably not perfect, but the information you want will be there.”

Google Translate currently supports around a dozen languages including French, Arabic, English, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and simplified Chinese.

Google expects its new Translate service for search results to be particularly popular outside of the United States and the United Kingdom since so much Internet content is published in English.

Google Translate search result tool has been released in beta status, which means that although it is already publicly available, the tool is still being tested and will continue to be improved over time.

Last week, Google launched a “universal search” tool, which integrates results across different media into search results.