Babel Fish (website)
{{For|the fictional fish in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series|Babel fish}}
{{Infobox Website
| name           = Babel Fish
| logo           = [[Image:Babelfish-right.gif]]
| screenshot     = 
| caption        = 
| url            = http://babelfish.yahoo.com/
| commercial     = 
| type           = Translation service
| language       = 
| registration   = 
| owner          = [[Yahoo]]
| author         = [[AltaVista]]
| launch date    = 
| current status = 
| revenue        = 
}}
'''Babel Fish''' is a [[World Wide Web|web]]-based application on [[Yahoo!]] that [[machine translation|machine translates]] text or web pages from one of several languages into another. Developed by [[AltaVista]], the application is named after the fictional animal used for instantaneous [[language]] [[translation]] in [[Douglas Adams]]'s series ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]].'' In turn the fish is a reference to the [[biblical]] account of the city of [[Babel]] and the [[Confusion of tongues|various languages]] said to have arisen there.  

The translation technology for Babel Fish is provided by [[SYSTRAN]], whose technology also powers a number of other sites and portals. It translates among [[English language|English]], [[Simplified Chinese]], [[Traditional Chinese]], [[Dutch language|Dutch]], [[French language|French]], [[German language|German]], [[Greek language|Greek]], [[Italian language|Italian]], [[Japanese language|Japanese]], [[Korean language|Korean]], [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]], [[Russian language|Russian]], and [[Spanish language|Spanish]]. 

The service makes no claim to produce a perfect translation. A number of humour sites have sprung up that use the Babel Fish service to translate back and forth between one or more languages (a so-called [[round-trip translation]]).

After a long existence at babelfish.altavista.com, the site was moved on May 9 2008 to babelfish.yahoo.com.

==See also==
* [[Comparison of machine translation applications]]
* [[Windows Live Translator]]
* [[Google Translate]]
* [[Asia Online]]

==External links==
* [http://babelfish.yahoo.com Yahoo! Babel Fish Translation Service]
* [http://www.tashian.com/multibabel/ Lost in Translation (round-trip translation)]

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Machine translation]]
[[Category:Yahoo!]]

[[ar:سمكة بابل (موقع)]]
[[da:Babelfish]]
[[de:Babelfish]]
[[id:Babel fish]]
[[nl:Babel Fish]]
[[no:Babel Fish]]
[[zh:寶貝魚]]