Idea: solving the "Babylonian problem" in IM

Yesterday, Google announced the release of the Google AJAX Language API , an API for accessing their text translation service.

Immediately the idea arose to create a plugin for any of the IM (preferably Pidgin :)) which translates to the user in a transparent way when speaking with a foreign language person in his native language. And also in the opposite direction, what a foreigner writes is translated into the user's language. Such a "Babylonian fish."

Immediately visible problems:
- small delays in the transmission of messages caused by the constant access to the Google service
- increase the amount of data transmitted
- API is provided for javascript, and plug-ins are written more often in compiled languages. Although it is not such a big problem for our “left-handers”
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UPD: After some googling, it turned out that the idea is not very new and some implementations already exist, for example, ULRTMT for Skype. However, something universal, and even more so Open-source, is not yet available. So this is a great place to make an effort. If someone is interested in this idea - maybe we will try?

UPD2: The comments pointed to the translator plugin for Kopete. I do not know how much it works, but it exactly meets all the requirements. So I think the question is completely closed, and the idea is useless and lagging behind the progress by several years :). However, the proposal for creating such a plugin for Pidgin remains relevant. Thanks to all!