Babel Fish (website)
From Freepedia
Babel Fish is a internet-based application developed by AltaVista (now part of Yahoo!) which machine translates text or web pages from one of several languages into another. It takes its name from the Babel fish, a fictional animal used for instantaneous language translation in Douglas Adams' novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The translation technology for Babel Fish is provided by SYSTRAN, whose technology also powers the translator at Google and a number of other sites.
It can translate among English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
While the methods used for translation are advanced, the service makes no claim to produce a perfect translation: the best that is claimed is that it can allow a reader to gain the gist of a page or text. The quality of translation depends on the languages in question (English-French can be passable, but Japanese-English usually produces gibberish). A number of humour sites have sprung up that use the Babel Fish service to translate back and forth between one or more languages (a so-called "round-trip" translation), generally with amusing results.
Contents |
An example of Babel Fish translation and its flaws
This example comes from the folding bridge article, problem words and phrases are in italics:
Original German
...Die Hörnbrücke ist Anfang bzw. Endpunkt einer im Mai 2004 eröffneten touristischen Ferienstraße: Die Deutsche Fährstraße - von Bremervörde bis zur Kieler Förde - verbindet rund 50 verschiedene Fähren, Brücken, Schleusen, Sperrwerke und maritime Museeen; Wahrzeichen sind die Schwebefähren in Rendsburg und in Osten (Oste); eine weitere Fähre dieser Art stand bis 1923 in der damaligen Kaiserlichen Werft in Kiel.[1]
Babel Fish Translation
...The hearing bridge is at the beginning and/or terminator point of one in May 2004 opened routistic holidays road: The German driving race - from Bremervoerde to the Kieler Foerde - connects approximately 50 different ferries, bridges, air-locks, barriers and maritime Museeen; Landmarks are the schwebefaehren in Rendsburg and in the east (Oste); a further ferry of this kind stood until 1923 in the imperial one at that time threw in Kiel.
Version polished by a fluent German speaker
...The bridge offers one of the most beautiful panoramic views of the Baltic Sea city of Kiel. It is also at the beginning and terminating point of a scenic route: this tourist route from Bremervörde to the Kieler Förde connects approximately 50 different ferries, bridges, ship locks, tidal barriers and maritime museums and its landmarks of the Rendsburg and Osten (Oste) transporter bridges.
Note that it is not called the hearing bridge but this is a reasonable literal translation
