If you take a wander through h2g2 then you'll spot one thing: it's all in a language that doesn't stray too far from English (most of the time anyway). But the Internet is a global community and we're fully aware that lots of people out there don't use English as their preferred language.

So what we need is a translation mechanism. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject:

'The Babel Fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them.

 

'The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel Fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel Fish. Meanwhile, 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.'

The real life Babel Fish can be found at Alta Vista's online translation service. We're planning to build the functionality of Babel Fish into h2g2, but until then why not take a stroll over to Alta Vista's Babel Fish and see what happens? It's fun, it's useful and is highly unlikely to start any wars.

Go to Alta Vista's Babel Fish