Google Translator Toolkit – How to Remove a Comment

There's no way to control talking speed in the Translate site (and you're right, it does speak pretty fast in French), nor is there any provision for it in the Google Translate API.

Is there a way to quickly merge my Google accounts

No. I actually emailed Google about this one after migrating my domain email to Google Apps, since I'd had another Google account set up. They don't offer any services for merging Google Accounts.

let me easily check both of my Gmail accounts, all from one place, whilst still keeping them relatively separate

Is Google's own Multiple Sign-In enough?

My Hotmail account, what can I do about that?

Sadly, not much. Start the painful process of switching those accounts on various sites over to one of your new accounts. Crap like this is the #1 reason I bought my own domain: So my email address would never have to change again.