Babel Fish (website)
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Type of site | Translation service |
|---|---|
| Owner | Yahoo! |
| URL | babelfish |
| Commercial | No |
| Launched | December 9, 1997 |
| Current status | Defunct |
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.[citation needed]
History
[edit | edit source]On December 9, 1997, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and SYSTRAN S.A. launched AltaVista Translation Service at babelfish.altavista.com,[6] which was developed by a team of researchers at DEC.[4][7] In February 2003, AltaVista was bought by Overture Services, Inc.[8] In July 2003, Overture, in turn, was taken over by Yahoo!.[9]
The web address for Babel Fish remained at babelfish.altavista.com until May 9, 2008, when the address changed to babelfish.yahoo.com.[10]
In 2012, the Web address changed again, this time redirecting babelfish.yahoo.com to www.microsofttranslator.com when Microsoft's Bing Translator replaced Yahoo Babel Fish.[11]
As of June 2013, babelfish.yahoo.com no longer redirects to the Microsoft Bing Translator. Instead, it refers directly back to the main Yahoo.com page.[12]
See also
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References
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