May 6, 2007

The Babel Fish Translator

Being the rabid Douglas Adams fan that I am, you can imagine my surprise and delight the first time I ever Googled "online translation" and discovered Babel Fish.

Explaining how the various aliens from different planets can understand each other remains a terrible problem for science fiction writers. In Adams' five-part Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, an actual fish, called the Babel fish, translated any language into your own. In order to get it to do that, however, you have to shove the fish into your ear.

Fortunately, you don't have to actually shove the Babel Fish website anywhere. All you have to do is paste in a block of text for it to translate and choose your 'to' and 'from' languages.

Then voila! Can you please direct me to the sausages? in English becomes, ????? in Russian. Interestingly enough, this re-translates back from Russian into the English, "Can you if you please immediately 4 to the sausages?"

Translate that seven more times, and your computer may explode! LOL

This particular game is most fun if played with short passages, because that is a surefire way to expose yourself to some truly strange syntax. Of course, this is an indication that this isn't going to give you highly polished translations of prize-winning quality, but you may be able to communicate fairly well with your e-mail friend in Japan.

The site also has a feature that allows you to type in the URL of a foreign website so that it can translate the entire site for you.

If you have a website of your own, you can add Babel Fish Translation to your site, making things easier for your readers. This works for English, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese sites.