PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

I was speaking with a Japanese person even though we don't speak each others language with a live text translator in Second Life. It works rather well, better than you would expect. Once in a while you get a sentence that makes no sense at all. It is amazing to me to be able to communicate with someone that way. Second Life is free and so was the translator which was a plug-in developed by someone. The genius of Second Life is users create most of the content.

No, it doesn't work outside of Second Life. This feature ought to be a part of text messaging programs but I have never seen it there.

Second Life has a lot of Japanese people partly because Japanese is one of the few languages supported. It's also a society that is very much into games and anime.