Here at Google's Searchology event, the company's vice president of engineering Udi Manber just announced a new feature Google is launching soon: Cross Language Information Retreival.
It basically allows anyone to find any document in any language. Google handles the translation on the fly. It's a technology that Manber says will "break the language barrier" for Google's international audience.
Search in any French and ask to see results in English (drop-down menus let you pick which ever two languages you need). You'll get a two-column view of results -- on the left are the English results translated into French on the fly, and on the right are the English pages in their original language.
There are two translation operations happening at once. Your query is translated as you type it so you can check for the accuracy of the search you're performing, and your results are translated instantly.
I heard no details about when this will launch, but I'm excited to try it out.
