Office, school or government block a website you want to read? Use Google Translate.

Here’s an incredibly useful trick for anyone who lives in a country that restricts access to websites, or uses a controlled version of the Internet at work or school. You can turn to Google Translate to access blocked websites, as this thread on Reddit explains.

Type or copy/paste the URL into Translate, select any language within the ‘from’ box — your language of choice should be selected for ‘to’ — hit translate and there you have it.

Here, for example is hotspotshield.com, which is blocked in Thailand and won’t get me in trouble for posting on the Internet:

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Made available via Translate:

This tip isn’t a VPN — so it won’t let you access Netflix, Spotify and other services where they aren’t supported — but it will override a local block. RSS readers are another way to circumvent blocks, but since not all websites offer RSS feeds and it requires some forward planning, this hack enables more spontaneous browsing.

➤ LPT: If a website is blocked on your work/school internet, you can use google translate as a proxy. [Reddit]

Image via Thinkstock