The Chromium source code has seen a number of changes recently, and a new feature which poked its head out earlier this weekend has now landed.

You can now enable auto-translation of pages in Chromium. Just add the --auto-translate switch to your Chromium shortcut and head over to a foreign language web page to test it out. A Google Translate bar will appear, and you can then click the button to convert all text on the page.

Translated text appears without reloading the page itself, and you won't have long to wait -- pages I tested were completed within four seconds or less.

Not sure how to enable the feature? Check out our guide to adding switches to Google Chrome or Chromium!

Remember, this only works in Chromium right now -- auto-translate has not yet made to even the developer build of Google Chrome. It's probably only a matter of time until we see it there, however. I fully expect to see a number of Google services integrated more tightly into Chrome as we get closer to the arrival of Chrome OS.

 

For those of you looking for a way to do this in Google Chrome right now, head over to the Extensions Gallery -- there are more than 50 translation options for you.