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Babel Fish is a web-based application developed by AltaVista which translates text from one of several languages into another.The Babel fish is a fictional device used for instantaneous language translation in Douglas Adams' book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. People (or other sentient beings) place the fish in one ear, where it feeds on brain waves and excretes a telepathic matrix that the brain decodes using the speech heard, leading to instant language translation.
The name Babel, in turn, is taken from the Tower of Babel, appearing in the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Built by the descendants of NoahNoah or Noach ("Rest", Standard Hebrew Noa Tiberian Hebrew No Arabic Nu is a character from the Bible story that describes him building the ark to save the people and animals from the Deluge, the universal flood. Noah was the son of Lamech and the grandso, the tower was intended to reach to Heaven itself, but the Bible says God punished this act of hubris by destroying the tower and confusing the builders' language so they could no longer understand each other's speech, leading to the welter of languages in existence today.
The name Babel is said in the Bible to come from HebrewThe word Hebrew can variously mean: The Hebrew language or Hebrew languages The Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew calendar Pertaining to Jews or Judaism The ancient Hebrew people An Israelite, Jew, Pashtun, Bnai Israel The term Hebrew is sometimes used by certai balal = "he confused"; but it likelier is from the Babylonian name for BabylonBabylon was the capital city of Babylonia in Mesopotamia (in contemporary Iraq, about 70 miles south of Baghdad). The name is the Greek form of Babel which is derived in turn from the Semitic form Babilu meaning "The Gate of God". This Semitic word is a t and means "Gate of the god".
Several onlineOnline means being connected to the Internet or another similar electronic network, like a bulletin board system. Some companies have "online" in their name, such as America Online. Although it sounds similar, online is not the same as on air. When one is services have been implemented that use the Babel Fish service to translate back and forth between EnglishThe English language is a West Germanic language, originating from England. It is the third most common "first" language (native speakers), with around 402 million people in 2002. English has lingua franca status in many parts of the world, due to the mil and another language, often with humorous or strange results - called a "round-trip" translation.
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