Alas, Babelfish

[alfreda89]

And then there are the days when a web page spends five minutes trying to get you to sign in with Facebook. When you click "No, thanks" it offers you a registration page you cannot get around. So, you give up and pop over to see what the separate Bing setup looks like (the same people, but different pages) and the system is fighting Firefox and No Script, neither liking the page. When you get the page to hold still, Bing's translator keeps printing the same French on the other side.

So I get to double-check my understanding of this word by word, it having been much too long ago that I took French:

Voici les dernières nouveautés du monde de l’entreprises

Here is the last novelty of world enterprise?

Babelfish could make incredible bloopers -- I learned to double check by translating back, to see what the system thought in reverse -- but I will miss its simple improvement of my understanding.

And they won't have me looking at their ads while waiting for my translation. May I suggest a FAIL? Must find a translator I like and install on the browser.

Comments

[mouser.livejournal.com]

"Here is the latest news from the world of business"

http://translate.google.com/#auto/en/

Plus it will speak it. Oh, and there are smartphone apps for it that are pretty cool.

Honestly, I didn't even know Bablefish was still up...

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Yes, this. Babelfish is pretty hopeless.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I see someone else beat me to it. Is there a specific problem with Google Translate that you don't want to use it?

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

It also wasn't working with No Script. I may have to stop using No Script, since I can't keep up with adding blocked scripts and allowed ones. It's easier to run Spybot and dump all the stuff every few days.

[sheilagh.livejournal.com]

can you add blanket permissions to NoScript, say allowing all translate.google.com pages?

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

On a smart day, yes! ;^)

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I don't think I can add directly to the white list -- I have to pick it up from the site? So the answer is maybe --

[sheilagh.livejournal.com]

google's translator suggests something more sensible:

Here is the latest news from the world of business

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Confirming that this is not the evangelical church in New Mexico anymore!

Want to go to 24 later? I am FINALLY back from errands and appointments, and have a letter to that evangelical minister to proof. Banned Books Week approaches!

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I cob web, but not the church's --