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nigella_gw

Babelfish

Nigella
21 years ago

Did anybody else read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series? I think it was in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe that Douglas Adams(my hero, *sigh*) introduced the brilliant idea of a Babelfish, which one put into one's ear in order to understand other languages. Now, this is not a perfect substitute, but you gotta love the name, and its' not too bad either, lol. Here's a (click here:)Babelfishcolor> for you. I hope it proves useful!

Now, if I can just figure out what The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul was all about????

Comments (13)

  • Nancy5050
    21 years ago

    WHAT a really neat little gift.Can I really say any thing from my heart and that will change it around so every one can really understand it .Great more people should speak from their heart and not their back side if any one gets my jest .Guess thats also what the preview buttons also for to give us a moment to review,reflect and not step off into the mud ,but being human even after all that we all some times do it any way then wish there was an''I take it all back button.But being afraid to frain some weakness or flaw in our chariter even tho we regret it stick to our guns.Geez aint we human beings a strange lot.

  • Nancy5050
    21 years ago

    Just passing through this time

  • Nigella
    Original Author
    21 years ago

    No, I doubt that it will make your heartfelt meaning clear, but it will give someone else an idea of what you're talking about and it will let you understand those great German and French plant sites if you don't understand those languages.

  • cicadae
    21 years ago

    Ciò è un luogo molto piacevole! Grazie!

  • cicadae
    21 years ago

    Pensez-vous que le peuple qui a lancé ces idées reçoit maintenant le courrier sur elles? Quelle surprise pour recevoir le courrier sur quelque chose vous avez écrite presque il y a une année!

  • kittynip
    21 years ago

    Que ideia interessante da linha!

  • cottage_rose
    21 years ago

    Enough already! LOL

  • jeannej
    21 years ago

    Nigella, I can't begin to tell you how thrilled I am with your discovery!! Every holiday season I work for a friend that has a x-mas tree farm and makes wreaths for PTA's etc, to sell. For the last several years most of our "wreath makers" have been hispanic with very little English (if any). Now I can write up the things we need to tell them and translate and print it out!! Now I'm getting excited about the season!!

  • Nigella
    Original Author
    21 years ago

    I'm so glad you all like it, it's kind of fun and it does open new sites. Jeanne, I'm really happy that this has enhanced the spirit of Christmas for you, that is so cool. Who'd a thunk you could do that for someone you don't even know through such an impersonal medium? I hear bits and pieces of the news no matter how hard I try to shield myself(deeply affected, I guess, by Lost Horizon) and over and over you hear bad things about the internet. I wish that they'd focus more on these kinds of sites.

  • sara_the_brit_z6_ct
    21 years ago

    Having used babelfish for several years, I should warn you that the translations are not terribly precise - enough to get the general gist of what you wanted translating, but usually not reliable enough to print out and use. Always get someone to check it!

  • Nigella
    Original Author
    21 years ago

    Thank you, Sara, the warning is well received! Here's another cool tool, but of course, nothing made by man is ever perfect: it's called iespell and it will spell check whatever document you're working on, you can check just a small bit or an entire document. iespell

  • mwedzi
    21 years ago

    I have to second the need t check the translation. The Korean-English one is pretty bad, unfortunately. You don't even have to know Korean to know this. Just find a Korean webpage and have it translate it to English. It will be nonsense, but quite funny sometimes.

    Actually, I tried to use it once to tell my Korean teacher something. I wrote the English sentence something like "As this is difficult to write in Korean, I'm going to write in in English". You should have seen the translation! "Korean" was translated as "a Korean person" and "in English" had the wrong case so it came out to be "inside Korean", which of course makes no sense. Two totally different and unrelated words in Korean. But it was funny, and just goes to highlight really how difficult translation is and how amazing the human mind is that it generally knows proper translations. In any case, kudos to Babelfish for the effort, and I understand English-French is better than English-Korean. (can you tell i'm a linguistics student? am i on a gardening forum?)

  • Violet_Girl
    20 years ago

    I thought I was the only one who had ever read that series!

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