Microsoft has really shifted its attention from building “quality” operating systems (like they’ve really accomplished it all of these years) to web services. Windows with the Windows Live services is really trying to play catch-up to Google is you ask me. Live Search. Live Messenger. Now Windows Live Translator. It’s still in beta but it’s up and running.

While it features translation from an English page to a lot of languages including German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian, it only allows you to translate a limited 500 words. It allows you to translate web pages, though.

The services uses Systran to power its translations which can also be found in some Google services. However, Microsoft does offer translation of computer-related texts using an machine translation system that they’ve developed internally. It can be used to translate materials like technical items found in the MSDN Library.

Via Google Operating System