Google has released 24 translatations chatbots for their IM platform Google talk. If you want to try it for Chinese, just add .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) as a friend in Google Talk and send it a message to translate from English to Chinese. You can use it as an interpreter in your group chat, or as a pocket translator in your Google Talk client for BlackBerry. The image shows Sukhdeep Singh experimenting with this bot in Hindi.
For other languages, just add any of the 29 23 other translation bots. They’re named using two-letter language abbreviations as “[from language]2[to language]@bot.talk.google.com”, and the supported language pairs are: ar2en, de2en, de2fr, el2en, en2ar, en2de, en2el, en2es, en2fr, en2it, en2ja, en2ko, en2nl, en2ru, en2zh, es2en, fr2de, fr2en, it2en, ja2en, ko2en, nl2en, ru2en, zh2en. So, for French to German translation, talk to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2007/12/merry-christmas-god-jul-and.html