Site Of The Day: Babel Fish Translation

June 15th, 2006 by Pia Taylor

Altavista Babel Fish Translation Tool

In Douglas Adams’s ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, Englishman Arthur Dent embarks on a search for the answer to ‘life, the universe and everything’.

During this epic quest Arthur bumps into a bunch of strange aliens, all speaking languages so far removed from English that he had to enlist the aid of a Babelfish.

Simply inserting this nifty little fish into your ear meant you could ‘instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language’.

Altavista’s translation tool, Babelfish, was of course named after this fictional fish, and though it doesn’t have any alien languages listed just yet (and doesn’t fit in your ear), you can request translations to and from various languages that are nonetheless very foreign indeed.

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