Google Reader, where all of your favorite RSS feeds come together on one friendly page in your Google account, can now automatically translate the news. For example, if you only read English, you can still stay current on the local beats in Ecuador, Thailand or Italy. Simply search and subscribe to news sources from those countries; then in the “Feed settings” tab, select the option “Translate into my language.” The page will automatically reload and all items will appear in your language. You can change your language in Google account settings.

To test the new service, I subscribed to a few news feeds from Guadalajara, Mexico –El Informador and El Mural. The translation is nearly instantaneous. The translated content is not flawless, but highly readable. A news story in Spanish titled “Barack alista su equipo de trabajo” was translated as “Barack enlists his team,” and the article’s lead translates as:

WASHINGTON - The president-elect of the United States, Barack Obama, wants a government with diverse racial, geographic and gender, said his transition team, announced that it will spend $12 million and employ 450 people in the period.

While a story on politics translates well, digital media blogger Elinor Mills didn’t have the same luck with the translation of a Japanese LOLCATS blog, which she concluded must “be a symptom of the genre more than the translation.” Click here to read her post about Google Reader’s new function, plus view screenshots of the feed and the humorously translated Japanese captions (”I have a ball into a cat?”).

This story serves as a warning to those who don’t double-check translations before publishing them — in this case in a very public spot.

Officials in Wales mistakenly erected a road sign that read “I am not in the office at the moment” in Welsh after a translation mix-up. The sign originally said in English, “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only,” but when Swansea Council officials sent it to be translated, they received an automated e-mail written in Welsh that read: “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.”

Unaware of the actual meaning of the e-mail, officials had the sign printed and put up near a supermarket, only realising their mistake when Welsh speakers pointed it out.

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While ultimately harmless, the story makes me wonder what would have happened if a less pedestrian email message had been published without proofing.