Online Translations
There are several Online Translation tools, which enable to translate a Chinese text fast and without the need of an dictionary. However, these Online Translations do not work 100percent accurately. But they are useful to get an impression about a text.
Here are three of them:
Rikai and Popjisiyo
Babel Fish
Rikai and Popjisiyo
Both are very similar to each other. These services enable to copy and paste whole Chinese texts (e.g. out of an email). You just copy the text in an input field, press the button, and after a few minutes the translation appears in a field. Or you just run the cursor over a word, the translation appears automatically. You also can let translate whole websites, you just copy the web-address in the appropriate field. It seems that Rikai can not translate UNICODE-coded sites. POPJisyo has no problem with that.
Both Translation tools are based on the CEDICT Chinese-English word-list, which unfortunately evince many gaps (But it is going to improve).
Babel Fish
Another Online Translator is Babel Fish from Altavista. It translates from Chinese-English and English-Chinese. Whereas the translation is very inaccurate. But it is still understandably.