I always knew Babelfish was around—and probably was one of the earliest people to begin using it, when the translations were a bit rougher—but in the era of blogging, it’s come into its own.
   I might not surf to a foreign-language magazine or newspaper if I knew I couldn’t read it, but I might surf to a single blog post. When Stefan Engeseth pointed me to an Italian review of his upcoming book, One, it was Babelfish to the rescue, since my knowledge of the language is limited to asking directions and ordering food. I replied to the blog post in English. I assume that if the blogger was not an Anglophone, he’d Babelfish my words.
   The same thing happened with a Russian post earlier in the year. The language gap may be narrowing, because we like to talk with one another.
   Even Turin is now commonly called Torino, thanks to the Olympics. The Italian Job couldn’t manage that. We didn’t have Rome become Roma, or Tokyo take on its Japanese pronunciation, with previous Olympiads—only certain cities in China (Beijing) and India (Mumbai, Chennai) have managed changes in my lifetime. Something is happening out there linguistically, and it’s an area where I can say technology has improved lives and understanding. Posted by Jack Yan, 21:56  permalink

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