Language translation the Babel Fish way

Online language translation is starting to make some substantial waves as a quick means of translating e-mail documents and website content across languages.

Pioneering translation service Systran has developed and refined the Babel Fish website. Babel Fish (http://babelfish.altavista.com/) makes it possible for users to translate 150 word phrases from English to any of the following languages: French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, Russian, Japanese and Korean.

Interim solution

The technology offered by Babel Fish enables website owners to also offer their content in the eight languages. By simply adding an additional widget, website owners can offer an instant translation of all their Web content that is in text (graphics or items animated via Flash animation will not be affected).

Web researchers can also type in the Web address of a foreign language site and within seconds, receive a translated version of that site in the language of their choice. This breaks down one of the Internet’s biggest barriers – language translation.

A service like Babel Fish makes it possible for websites to offer multi-language versions without the added expense of having to get translations for each language and creating different versions of the websites for specific language markets. A costlier solution would be to duplicate the sites into as many different languages necessary.

Translations are by no means perfect and are mostly direct translations. Online translations work quickly but cannot be faulted for being inaccurate. A live professional translator will still do a much better job, especially in determining context and accuracy in translation.

An evolutionary process

The Babel Fish service, named after a translator character from Douglas Adam’s A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, has been available to users since the mid-90s through the Altavista Web portal.

The service concentrated on translating English to other languages and in the past few years, has added a number of languages as well as new features – faster translation, higher degree of accuracy, and capability to translate foreign languages (Italian, German, Korean, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Japanese) to English.

Even though Babel Fish is limited to these languages, it is still a powerful and infinitely useful resource for all sorts of users, including students and foreigners living in other countries.

Refinements in the service and the translation technology and the addition of other languages should make Babel Fish an indispensable resource in the years to come.