[edit] Babel Fish - the Online Translator
Babel Fish is an online translator - one can use it to translate web pages or text between languages. It's extremely useful for dealing with Renault 5 enthusiasts who cannot speak your language. There are many people for whom English is not their first language, and some who don't speak a word - so why not help them out and use Babel Fish?
http://babelfish.altavista.com (cache) - easy!
[edit] What's a Babel Fish? Who on earth came up with that name?
The Babel Fish comes from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. The BBC Online - Cult - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (cache) - seems a reasonable place to start if you've not heard of the Guide. I quote, from the original:
The Babel fish, is small, yellow, and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it.It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish. Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything that mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn´t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don´t. QED." "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn´t thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. "Oh, that was easy," says man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing. Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo´s kidneys, but that didn´t stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, Well That about Wraps It Up for God. Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
Alta Vista has used the name Babel Fish for their online translator. At one stage, they did have a picture of a fish, pointing to the Hitchhiker's Guide web pages, but sadly no longer.
I digress...
[edit] How do I use Babel Fish?
1. To translate small blocks of text:
Just go to http://babelfish.altavista.com (cache). Enter the text you want to translate into the text area, or copy and paste it in. Then, select the appropriate "From and to languages", and click the "Translate" button. For example, if I wanted to translate "The weather is very nice today." into French, I would paste the phrase into the text area, and select "English to French" from the pull-down menu. I would then click "Translate" and get: "Le temps est très agréable aujourd'hui."! Now, my French isn't great, but that looks pretty good to me - I'm sure any French person would be able to understand that.
If someone were to e-mail me in Italian - e.g: "Volevo segnalare un oggetto in vendita su eBay molto interessante", I would paste the text into the web page, and select "Italian to English", click Translate, and be greeted with: "I wanted to signal an object in sale on eBay a lot interesting." - not a perfect English sentence, but it's certainly understandable.
2. To translate web pages:
Go to the home URL of Babel Fish http://babelfish.altavista.com (cache), and paste or enter the URL of the web page you want to translate. Select the From and To languages, as above and click "Translate". Away you go! Now you can browse French websites in English, or vice-versa, or indeed any of the combinations offered by Babel Fish.
[edit] Babel Fish Hints and Tips
You will notice that the translations performed by Babel Fish are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. However, you can help things along, particularly when translating text from your native language into different languages. It can help to try the translations several times, varying the grammar and choice of words used. If a word is not recognised, it will just appear in the translated text as in the original language. For example, if I attempt to translate: "The wather is very noce today." into French, I get: "Le wather est très noce aujourd'hui.", which makes no sense at all in its intended tongue.
OK, so spelling mistakes are definitely something to avoid, but, Babel Fish sometimes can't cope with even simple turns of phrase, such as: "It's a grand day today." translates to: "It's par jour grand aujourd'hui." - so, from that poor translation, we can deduce that we should not use colloquialisms (expressions, figures of speech, etc.), and neither should we use contractions (such as it's) - far better to use "it is". By modifying the sentence to "It is a wonderful day today.", we get: "C'est un jour merveilleux aujourd'hui." - much better.
Annoyingly, Babel Fish requires French, and other European languages to be spelt exactly correctly. The placement of accents is essential to the translation of words. What a pain!
[edit] Summary
As you can see, Babel Fish is an excellent tool for us all to use to help with the language divide. It's great for communicating with enthusiasts the World over! Enjoy.
r5gordini
