Babel Fish (website)

For the fictional creature used for instantaneous language translation in the book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, see Babel fish. For the other translation service see Babel Fish Corporation.

Babel Fish is a internet-based application developed by AltaVista which machine translates text 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' book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

It can translate to and from English and: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish.

It can translate to and from French and: English, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish.

Several online services have been implemented that use the Babel Fish service to translate back and forth between English and another language, often with humorous or strange results - called a "round-trip" translation.

External links

• Babel Fish Translation Service
• Lost in Translation ("round-trip" translation)