I’ve made a new friend on Twitter and she’s French. I’d like to surprise her by sending her messages in French. What’s the best way to translate my tweets?

There are a couple of translation engines you can use on the Web. The most famous is probably Babel Fish, named after a famous character from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But there’s an even better way to do it if you’re a Twitter buff.

It’s a service called Twanslate. @twanslate is a Twitter Bot capable of translating anything you throw at it. Here’s how it works.

1) Follow @twanslate

2) Send a direct message like “d twanslate fr Where is the bathroom?”

3) @twanslate responds with the translated text through a Twitter direct message

There you go, you can just push that out to you friend. You can ask anything you like, questions about the weather, how she’s feeling today, or even if she knows the best wrinkle treatment on the market.

Enjoy!