I've never done this before, someone help me out: how do you translate text through google?

It's especially easy if you use the Google Toolbar. Just click on the encircled i icon and one of the items on the dropdown list is "Translate into English."

The Google Toolbar also blocks popups and makes it really easy to quickly jump to occurances of search terms on a page.

Do keep in mind that the Google bar sends data to Google to see
what people search on and I also think where they browse too.
This information should be used anonymously by them.

Altavista also has a translation service here, InterTran supports
more languages (at the end of that page)

You can opt out of that when you download and set up the bar.

Wow! Didn't even know this thread existed! I thought a moderator simply deleted the post from the thread in which it was asked. . .my mistake. Thanks for the help guys.