Babel Fish (website)

Yahoo! Babel Fish was a free Web-based machine translation service by Yahoo!. In May 2012 it was replaced by Bing Translator (now Microsoft Translator), to which queries were redirected.^[1] Although Yahoo! has transitioned its Babel Fish translation services to Bing Translator, it did not sell its translation application to Microsoft outright.^[2]^[3] As the oldest free online language translator,^[4] the service translated text or Web pages in 36 pairs between 13 languages,^[4] including English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

The internet service derived its name from the Babel fish, a fictional species in Douglas Adams's book and radio series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that could instantly translate languages.^[5] In turn, the name of the fictional creature refers to the biblical account of the confusion of languages that arose in the city of Babel.

^ "Welcome Yahoo! Babel Fish users!". Bing Translator blog. 2012-05-31. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
^ "Welcoming Yahoo! Babel Fish users!". Bing Translator blog. 2012-05-30. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
^ "Yahoo's Babel Fish replaced with Bing Translator". Neowin.net, June 3, 2012, Jon Callaham.
^ ^a ^b "Yahoo Launches Babel Fish". Techshout.com, April 2006. 28 April 2006.
^ Switzer, Kyle (October 21, 2024). "The Rise and Fall of Babel Fish: What Happened to the Revolutionary Translation Tool?". AudioChamps. Retrieved 26 October 2024.