Former multilingual translation website
Yahoo! Babel Fish
Type of site
Translation service Owner
Yahoo! URL
babelfish .yahoo .com Commercial No Launched December 9, 1997; 26 years ago (1997-12-09 ) Current status Defunct
Yahoo! Babel Fish was a free
Web -based multilingual
machine translation service of
Yahoo! site. 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 . 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 .
History
On December 9, 1997,
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and
SYSTRAN S.A. launched
AltaVista Translation Service at babelfish.altavista.com,
[5] which was developed by a team of researchers at DEC.
[4]
[6] In February 2003, AltaVista was bought by
Overture Services, Inc.
[7]
In July 2003, Overture, in turn, was taken over by Yahoo!.
[8]
The web address for
Babel Fish remained at babelfish.altavista.com until May 9, 2008, when the address changed to babelfish.yahoo.com.
[9]
As of May 30, 2012, the Web address changed yet again, this time redirecting babelfish.yahoo.com to www.microsofttranslator.com when Microsoft's Bing Translator replaced Yahoo Babel Fish.
[10]
Yahoo! Babel Fish should not be confused with
The BabelFish Corporation founded by
Oscar Jofre ,
[11] which was operated at the URL
www.babelfish.com (created in 1995).
[12]
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.
[13]
Supported languages
Chinese (Simplified) to
English
Chinese (Traditional) to English
Dutch to English
Dutch to
French
English to Chinese (Simplified)
English to Chinese (Traditional)
English to Dutch
English to French
English to
German
English to
Greek
English to
Italian
English to
Japanese
English to
Korean
English to
Portuguese
English to
Russian
English to
Spanish
French to Dutch
French to English
French to German
French to Greek
French to Italian
French to Portuguese
French to Spanish
German to English
German to French
Greek to English
Greek to French
Italian to English
Italian to French
Japanese to English
Korean to English
Portuguese to English
Portuguese to French
Russian to English
Spanish to English
Spanish to French
See also
References
^
"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
c
"Yahoo Launches Babel Fish" . Techshout.com, April 2006. 28 April 2006.
^
"Babelfish: English" . 1999-04-27. Archived from
the original on 1999-04-27. Retrieved 2018-07-22 .
^
"BabelFish on the move - Business Edge News Magazine Archives" . Businessedge.ca. 2003-05-15. Archived from
the original on 2011-09-29. Retrieved 2012-09-20 .
^ Hansell, Saul (February 19, 2003),
"Overture Services to Buy AltaVista for $140 Million" , The New York Times
^
"Yahoo to acquire Overture" . July 13, 2003. Archived from
the original on July 8, 2007.
^
"AltaVista history" . Websearchworkshop.co.uk. 1995-12-15. Retrieved 2012-09-20 .
^
"Welcoming Yahoo! Babel Fish users!" . Microsoft Translator (and Bing Translator) Official Team Blog. Retrieved 2012-06-22 .
^
"BabelFish continues to grow international presence" . March 7, 2003. Archived from
the original on 2016-02-08. Retrieved 2012-07-18 .
^
"Public Whois of BabelFish" . Verisign Registry. Archived from
the original on 2015-10-18. Retrieved 2012-07-20 .
^
"Yahoo! Babelfish - redirects to Yahoo!" . babelfish.yahoo.com . Archived from
the original on 2006-05-04. Retrieved 2023-12-02 .
External links
Websites Communication Development Corporate Defunct services Related people Related