BabelFish

MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | Categories

: http://babelfish.altavista.com/translate.dyn

A pretty good translation service bought by the fun people at AltaVista?. It translates between European languages + Russian. A handy way to tag translated text on this Wiki is to sign "-- BabelFish".

The next comfort step is the inline invocation of BabelFish like this (e.g):

BabelFish: Translate this section from English to German. -- Fridemar

Of course, Fridemar:

"Der nächste Komfort Schritt ist der inline Aufruf von BabelFish wie (z.B.):

BabelFish: Übersetze diesen Abschnitt von Englisch nach Deutsch. -- Fridemar"

-- BabelFish

BabelFish was named after that wonderful invention of DouglasAdams?, the Babel fish in the HitchHikersGuideToTheGalaxy. This species can translate between any language to any language using a psychic matrix. In other words, a really neat way to get around the bazillion alien languages problem in sci fi.

Also, later on, Adams "proved" that God could not exist using the BabelFish. The proof went along like this:

: The BabelFish is so monumentally a useful creation that it must have been designed by God.

: But that would imply God exists.

: If we knew God exists, faith in God would be silly.

: Without faith, God is nothing.

: Therefore, God does not exist.

The other bold claim about the babel fish was that the resulting abolition of communication problems did not cause universal peace but rather more and bloodier wars than either before: postulating rather negatively that it is only by misunderstanding each other that we manage to get along at all...

-- AndrewCates.

P.S.: I agree the translator is rather good.

BabelFish

Discussion