I am not a great fan of online translation services, or at least not the free variety which almost invariably end up making some huge gaffs. However, Google obviously likes the idea as it has been providing just such a tool for a while now in the shape of Google Translate. Today it has announced that the technology will be integrated into Gmail as an experimental feature.

This will, the nice lady in the Google Press Office tells me, enable you "to conduct entire conversations in multiple languages, with each of you reading the messages in whatever language you choose."

Think of it as a step towards totally automatic email translation between 41 global languages, because that is what Google is doing. Or, put another way, translating between 41 languages works out to some 1640 different language pairs on offer. That is, so I am reliably informed, full coverage of the languages used by no less than 98 percent of Internet users.

Trouble is, I am left thinking that all this means for me is that Gmail will now very kindly translate all my spam into English. After all, it is only spammers who ever send me foreign language email, and much of it ends up arriving at my Gmail address.