After Babel Fish: The promise of cheap translations at the speed of the Web
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Re: After Babel Fish: The promise of cheap translations at the speed of the Web
#2> Google Translate (launched in 2006)
You know, Google has Orwellian-retconned the fact that Translate was available in 2004 (based on my memory and Internet Archive), no idea why. I remember using it in December 2004 to translate winhistory.de.
Re: After Babel Fish: The promise of cheap translations at the speed of the Web
#3> Google Translate (launched in 2006) You know, Google has Orwellian-retconned the fact that Translate was available in 2004 (based on my memory and Internet Archive), no idea why. I remember using it in December 2004 to translate winhistory.de.
Yeah, you seem to remember correctly. Apparently, it just didn't reached its "public beta" until 2006 so that's when they date it's beginning.
Re: After Babel Fish: The promise of cheap translations at the speed of the Web
#4> “The poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”
This Douglas Adams quote could also apply to the internet writ large
Re: After Babel Fish: The promise of cheap translations at the speed of the Web
#5Soniox offers real-time speech-to-text with real-time translation between 60+ languages (mostly to/from English with some additional pairs between more popular languages). It operates with minimal amount of context and produces the translated text as soon as possible.
Disclaimer: I used to work for Soniox
Re: After Babel Fish: The promise of cheap translations at the speed of the Web
#6> Google Translate (launched in 2006) You know, Google has Orwellian-retconned the fact that Translate was available in 2004 (based on my memory and Internet Archive), no idea why. I remember using it in December 2004 to translate winhistory.de.
I’m guessing it may have been available in 2004 in some form but the official launch seems to been in 2006 so the quote seems accurate.
Re: After Babel Fish: The promise of cheap translations at the speed of the Web
#7> “The poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.” This Douglas Adams quote could also apply to the internet writ large
There are so many little nuggets like this in Hitchhiker's. It's why it's one of those pieces of art you can go back to time and again.
Re: After Babel Fish: The promise of cheap translations at the speed of the Web
#8> “The poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.” This Douglas Adams quote could also apply to the internet writ large
On a similar note i heard someone say it's lucky they need so many translators at the UN otherwise they might actually get things done!
Re: After Babel Fish: The promise of cheap translations at the speed of the Web
#9> Google Translate (launched in 2006) You know, Google has Orwellian-retconned the fact that Translate was available in 2004 (based on my memory and Internet Archive), no idea why. I remember using it in December 2004 to translate winhistory.de.
Technically true but misleading. translate.google.com was launched in beta in 2001. But it took until 2005ish to convince Larry and Sergey that "Google Translate" was a better name than "translate.google.com". They had a lot of strong ideas about branding but never did think of a better name. Source: I wrote translate.google.com starting in 2000. Sergey told me it would take "a couple months" when I was hired. Also the Wayback machine shows a version from August 2002 so you don't have to trust a rando on the internet. I entirely agree that it wasn't any good until I handed it off to people who actually knew what they were doing.
Re: After Babel Fish: The promise of cheap translations at the speed of the Web
#10> Google Translate (launched in 2006) You know, Google has Orwellian-retconned the fact that Translate was available in 2004 (based on my memory and Internet Archive), no idea why. I remember using it in December 2004 to translate winhistory.de.
Technically true but misleading. translate.google.com was launched in beta in 2001. But it took until 2005ish to convince Larry and Sergey that "Google Translate" was a better name than "translate.google.com". They had a lot of strong ideas about branding but never did think of a better name. Source: I wrote translate.google.com starting in 2000. Sergey told me it would take "a couple months" when I was hired. Also t…
Wow, I'd love to read your stories from that time, writing Google Translate from the ground.