![]() ![]() [ot-video type=”youtube” url=”The Google Translate app is already quite clever at providing spoken translations and it has been able to do real-time translations on Android since 2013 but the new update brings this feature to iOS for the first time.Īt the same time, Google’s boffins have added something very clever – the app can now automatically detect which of the two languages used in the conversation is being used, meaning you can have a more fluid conversation. The first enhancement really is a another step on the road to having a Douglas Adams’ Babel Fish on your smartphone (see clip below). The news from Google headquarters is that it has turned its Google Translate app into something that would not look out of place in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This article has been placed in our archives.The future is here at last and science fiction aficionados will rejoice in the latest news to come out of Mountain View. If you find a website in a language you don’t read, and you just want to get a general idea of the content, the web page translation tool is essential.However, if you are completing a school assignment or writing a piece that will be shared with a wider audience, you are more likely to create awkward, if not outright incorrect, translations than you are to truly communicate.In the end, nothing can replace solid instruction and true knowledge of the language. If you encounter a few unfamiliar words, it may be easier to type them in to BabelFish than to get out a dictionary. Taking its name from a translating fish in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, BabelFish has been helping language learnersīabel Fish offers translations for the following languages:Īll of the available languages are paired with English, with both English-to-target language and target language-to-English translations.In addition, BabelFish pairs French with Dutch, Portuguese, Greek, Italian, Spanish and German.You must have special characters enabled on your computer to view Chinese, Korean and Japanese translations.īabelFish will translate up to 33 words or 167 characaters at a time.Type or copy and paste your text into the box labeled “Translate a block of text” and click on the Translate button.Your translation will appear within seconds.īabel Fish recommends using proper spelling and grammar for the best results.Īlthough Babel Fish is a useful tool, it shares the limitations of most online translators in that it cannot recognize context.For instance, if you want write about flying in Spanish, you could input the word “fly” into the Babel Fish interface and select “English to Spanish”.The Spanish word that appears is mosca.This is definitely a correct translation of “fly”…if you’re talking about an insect buzzing around your computer.Trying to improve your results, you next try “to fly” so that the program will recognize it as a verb.The translation you receive is para volar, which roughly means “in order to fly”, a grammatical construction that may or may not be correct, depending on how you word your sentence. There is, however, another website called BabelFish. ![]() Since that time, Babel Fish has now been updated to the new Bing Translator. Editor’s Note: This article was originally written in Feb 2009. ![]()
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