With the web reaching more people in more countries everyday translations are becoming even more important. There are a number of translation services online and one of the best just got a big update. Google Translate was already impressive with support for 51 languages and some interesting features, but Google took it to the next level with a completely overhauled interface. The biggest feature and the most useful one is the new real-time translation, allowing you to get the results instantly.

“Today, we've launched three new features as well as a new look and feel for Google Translate — a service that helps people access information throughout the world by enabling them to automatically translate text and and web pages into their own language. Google Translate offers 51 languages, representing over 98% of Internet users today,” Awaneesh Verma, product manager for Google Translate, wrote. “Along with our shiny new layout, these new features should make it faster and easier for you to translate text between our 2550 language pairs.”

The new interface is simplicity at its best, typical Google, with all of the features you need and almost nothing else. There's a text box, drop-down menus to choose the languages and a somewhat redundant “Translate” button. Redundant, because whatever you type is translated in real-time below the box.

This may seem like a small feature, a nice touch, but not exactly crucial. Anyway, in reality, it completely changes the service. Seeing the sentence being formed as you type can really help you understand the translated text. Another great new feature is the possibility to suggest a new translation inside the same page making the process painless. This could make people actually want to submit better translations, so the rate at which Google collects this data should dramatically increase, meaning that the quality of the service should also go up faster.

With the new page, Google Translate added another new feature, which should come in very handy in some cases, allowing English-speaking users to pronounce and read non-roman languages with the exception of Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian, by clicking “Show romanization.” Finally, Google has also introduced a text-to-speech feature for English translations, allowing you to hear what the text would sound like in English.