I found another obscure site, MeGlobe. It’s a free, web-based IM (Instant Messaging) service that translates text while you chat.
HOLY chat in 14 different languages, Batman!
They currently support:
- English
- French
- German
- Italian
- Portuguese
- Spanish
- Russian
- Dutch
- Greek
- Swedish
- Arabic
- Japanese
- Korean
- Chinese Traditional and Simplified
I pasted the above list, directly from the site, but I believe Arabic = Farsi? And please correct me if I am wrong :) (thanks Mike!)
At any rate, an action shot of an IM with a friend (typing in English), and myself (typing in Japanese)
Granted, it’s not perfect.
For those familiar with on-line translation services, I would say the accuracy is somewhere between Babel Fish and the Google Translator Tool. But, the nuance of the context is captured, so it’s usable, IMHO.
I mean it’s
- 1. Free
2. Web-based (no install required FTW!!)
3. Easy to use
4. Translates text while chatting
5. AND supports Farsi. I’ve yet to see a site, that supports Farsi.
If you want to try it out, find me:
http://meglobe.com
Username: Mona
I don’t know any other services like this, do you?
PixelBits 
Hi Mona, sorry to have to correct you but Farsi and Arabic are different. They share most of the same letters but it’s in the same way as English and French share letters- the actual meanings and pronunciations of words are completely different. So it looks like MeGlobe supports Arabic, but not Farsi…
Mike: Don’t apologize! I NEED to be corrected.. want to be corrected!! I didn’t know, so instead of Googling, like I should have, I just took a wild guess ;)
….on that note, can you read and write in Farsi?
And why is it that a lot of translators seem to omit Farsi??
No I don’t know any Farsi. I’m learning Arabic so I know a tiny bit of that, and my teachers occasionally mention the differences between the two. I don’t know why Farsi doesn’t usually make it into translators, maybe it’s because it’s only really spoken in Iran and parts of neighbouring countries, and there are other languages that get ‘priority’ because they have more speakers?
Wow, this is pretty cool!
lol. meglobe just lost hosting. Their domain is dead and no one cares about their useless technology anymore.
the google translator si a nice free tool that you can get online’.:
google translator is great but sometimes there are so many errors on the translation ~;’