Google has cleaned up Translate with a new look, and threw in a few new features for good measure:

Translate as you type – The only problem with this is that any translator will tell you that langauges don’t translate word for word. But this has always been a problem with computed translation, so it’s not like the problem is worse with this or anything. Taking away the need to click a button feels like part of a greater strategy Google is testing, such as the recent homepage tests where the buttons under the text box were removed.

Romanization of character-based languages – If you’re translating to a character-based language such as Chinese, you can select “Show romanization” to get the words displayed phonetically in English. This is not yet available for Hebrew, Arabic, or Persian.

Text to speech – If you’d like to hear how your translation sounds, just click the speaker icon.

For more information on these new features, check out the video Google put together:

Google has added a whopping 285 languages to its Translator Toolkit. It brings the total number of languages to 345 and the number of possible language pairs to 10,664. The interface for Translator Toolkit is now available in 35 languages.

Google says its focusing on minority languages. This includes regional, heritage, indigenous, and threatened languages. Google wants to help preserve these lesser known languages so that these smaller cultures won’t be forgotten as history constantly unfolds.

One of the minority languages is Māori, an Eastern Polynesian language spoken in New Zealand. According to 2006 data, only 24% of Māori can speak their own language. Google has been working with Dr. Te Taka Keegan at the University of Waikato to preserve the Māori language. Keegan is a senior lecturer in computer science and an expert in how computer-assisted translation tools can assist in the preservation of minority languages.

Keegan has found that computer-assisted translation aids in faster translations and language unification. Tools like Google Toolkit can help in breaking down language barriers and enhancing the understanding of cultures from around the world.

Google is embracing the global web by offering two new Translation features. The first is a widget that can be placed on websites to assist with translation. When a website has the code snippet for the widget, the language settings in a visitor’s browser will be detected. If the language is other than the website’s language, the visitor will be prompted to have the page translated by Google.

The other new feature was released with the Google Toolbar update last week. For the Firefox version, new advanced in-page translation is available.