Tbot is an automated buddy that provides translations for Windows Live Messenger. It was first launched in 2008 as a prototype pre-dating many other bots and has since become immensely popular. You can have one-on-one conversations with Tbot or invite friends (group conversation) who speak different languages with Tbot translating for you.

Following is a set of frequently asked questions about the bot. If you have any technical questions, please post them in our user forums.

[Q1] How to install/add Tbot in your Messenger?

1. Open your Live Messenger and look for the Add a contact or group icon.

2. Type in mtbot@hotmail.com as your contact.  Tbot will now show up as one of your contacts.

[Q2] How to use Tbot commands?

1. Type TBot ? to see all the Tbot commands.  You will see the following list of Tbot commands.

2.  To see your current translation language setting, type TBot lang. For instance, if you were translating from French to English in your previous session, you will see the following.

(If you’re going to use Tbot for the first time, this is not applicable.)

3. To change your translation language setting, type TBot change.  Tbot will first show you the list of source languages (FROM languages) as shown below.

You have to select your source language here!!  Otherwise, Tbot won’t understand any commands.  In other words, commands such as Tbot ?, Tbot lang, etc. won’t work until you select your source language.

4. Once you select your source language, Tbot will ask you to select your target language (TO language).  Please select your target language.  Again, if you don’t select your target language here, Tbot won’t let you move on.  In other words, commands such as Tbot ?, Tbot set, etc. won’t work until you select your target language.

5. Once the source and the target languages got selected, you’re ready to translate.  Start typing any sentences.

Here is a snapshot for TBot translating from English to Japanese.

6.  Now if you want to change your language pairs, you can just type TBot change, and do #3 and #4 above.

     If you want to list all the TBot commands, you can type TBot ? . 

7. How to use TBot set

One of the TBot commands is TBot set.  Please note that this is to set up the language for your user interface, not for your translation language(s). 

For instance, when you type TBot set, you’ll see the language list as shown below.

If you are a Korean and want to see TBot’s instructions in Korean, you select Korean, so that you can see TBot’s instructions in Korean as shown below.

 

(2) Takako set the language pair using the Tbot command, “Tbot change”.

She set the source language to Japanese and the target language to Portuguese.

 

 

(3)   Takako and Erik can start the conversation using Japanese and Portuguese, respectively.

For instance: