Babylon software as a base for translation.

[Bill Ries-Knight <brk@slip.net>]

I read a short piece on the NY Timmes and this bit caught my eye....



                     Tower of Babel Takes on Times
                     by Tania Hershman

                     11:30 a.m.  17.Aug.99.PDT
                     JERUSALEM -- The New York Times is not
                     your basic monosyllabic tabloid.

                     The writing is sophisticated, sometimes
                     ostentatiously so. Recognizing this, the
                     online edition has cut a deal with
                     Babylon, an Israeli startup company, to
                     provide a point-and-click translation of
                     difficult words and phrases for its growing
                     audience of international readers.


                      See also: Breaking the Language Barrier


                     "We have a highly educated, affluent
                     audience online, just as we do in print,"
                     said Times official Lisa Carparelli.
                     "Anything we can do to help users
                     understand and gain access to our
                     content is a worthwhile endeavor, and
                     Babylon is just one way for us to do
                     that."

                     Since the Times waived its registration
                     fee for non-US users in June 1998, the
                     number of subscribers has grown to more
                     than a million. But there are around 63
                     million Web users in non-English speaking
                     countries still to be wooed.

                     For a limited time, Babylon is offering a
                     free download of its software, which
                     translates English into Spanish, Italian,
                     Hebrew, French, Japanese, German,
                     Dutch, and Portuguese.

I know many of you are truly international, and thought this might be a
resource to enhance your resouces by use of multilingual resouces etc.

I also wondered if the engine could be assimilated into any of the
current projects.  Just thinking out loud.

The piece on the NY Times is here, today anyway.
http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/21304.html

Babylon is here.  http://www.babylon.com

Bill