In 2009, Google brought its translation feature to Gmail as a Gmail Labs experiment. Today, almost exactly two years after it first launched, this feature is finally graduating from Gmail Labs. Starting in the next few days, you will see an option to “Translate message” in the header at the top of every message that is written in a foreign language.
You will, of course, have the option to turn this feature off as well. If you always want Gmail to translate a message in a particular language, you can also turn translation on as a default for that language.
Also Graduating: Title Tweaks
In addition to automatic message translation, Google also graduated Title Tweaks from Labs today. Thanks to this, your Gmail browser tabs will soon read “‘Inbox (20) – user@example.com – Gmail’ instead of ‘Gmail – Inbox (20) – user@example.com.’ That’s not a major change, obviously, but for users with a large number of tabs open, this tweak will make it easier to see how many new messages they have.
Gmail Labs Dropouts
Not everybody is graduating today, though. Google is also retiring a number of Labs products. These include Old Snakey, Mail Goggles, Mouse Gestures, Hide Unread Counts, Move Icon Column, Inbox Preview, Custom Date Formats and the SMS in Chat gadget. These experiments will be retired over the next few days.