The latest version of Opera, my favorite Web browser, now has a feature called “widgets.” These are basically the same as Firefox’s extensions. (Many of the features Firefox gets credit for were taken from Opera, so turnabout is fair play.)

Of particular interest to readers of this site is the GTranslation widget, which ties in with Google’s and BabelFish’s translation engines. This will allow you to input text and even Web pages in [Mandarin] Chinese and view them in English. Well, sort-of English. But at least it’s free!

Thus, this widget is Opera’s equivalent of Firefox’s translation extensions.

GTranslation was written by Shoust.

I know that many of my readers are still tied to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. I strongly recommend trying Opera or Firefox, which are faster, more secure, and generally better in most every way.