After Babel Fish: the Promise of Cheap Translations at the Speed of the Web

Posted4 months agoActive3 months ago

miqkt

70 points

16 comments

hedgehogreview.comTechstory

calmpositive

Debate

20/100

Machine TranslationLanguage TechnologyCommunication

Key topics

Machine Translation

Language Technology

Communication

The article discusses the evolution of machine translation technology since Babel Fish, and the comments explore its current capabilities, limitations, and potential applications.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Moderate engagement

First comment

Peak period

54-60h

Avg / period

3.2

Comment distribution16 data points

Loading chart...

Based on 16 loaded comments

Key moments

01Story posted
Sep 18, 2025 at 6:16 AM EDT
4 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Sep 20, 2025 at 4:03 PM EDT
2d after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
6 comments in 54-60h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Sep 21, 2025 at 4:30 PM EDT
3 months ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (16 comments)

Showing 16 comments

bananaflag

3 months ago

3 replies

> 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.

duggelz

3 months ago

1 reply

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.

101008

3 months ago

Wow, I'd love to read your stories from that time, writing Google Translate from the ground.

ghaff

3 months ago

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.

jazzypants

3 months ago

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.

https://translatepress.com/history-of-google-translate/

whoisthemachine

3 months ago

3 replies

> “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

squigz

3 months ago

2 replies

Can you elaborate on your position? To me the opposite is far more obvious: the Internet has enabled people from all over the world to meet, learn from each other, become friends. "The Russians/Chinese/whatever" are no longer just a faceless group of people who are trying to take over the world - they're the person you worked with a few years ago, the friend you've played games with for years, the open source developer you've been collaborating with.

danielbln

3 months ago

1 reply

That's certainly one facet of the Internet. Another is the Internet being a tool for nation state actors and grifters to undermine, lead astray and pit against each other large parts of the population, plus its uncanny ability to give rise and reach to the most abstruse ideas like anti vax and flat earth and alt right and incels and Q anon and all that (which usually circles back to aforementioned actors using it as a tool to further their interests).

squigz

3 months ago

Historically, citizens have been much more at the whims of the rich and powerful's propaganda, and were often never exposed to differing viewpoints, let alone cultures other than their own. Now, at least, we have those things.

(I also find it notable that you'd include "alt right" in that list, as if there's no crazies on the far left.)

aleph_minus_one

3 months ago

1 reply

> the Internet has enabled people from all over the world to meet, learn from each other, become friends. "The Russians/Chinese/whatever" are no longer just a faceless group of people who are trying to take over the world - they're the person you worked with a few years ago

This is the statement of the "contact hypothesis"

> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Contact_hypothesi...

Be aware that there is also evidence for the negative contact hypothesis:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Contact_hypothesi...

"Stefania Paolini, Jake Harwood, and Mark Rubin (2010) proposed that intergroup contact may have more negative than positive effects on prejudice, because it makes outgroup members' social group more salient during encounters. [...] Negative sentiments triggered by proximity are also described as NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard)."

In other words: it can also happen that if you get to know some people from other countries more, you begin to hate them more.

squigz

3 months ago

While I'd agree that (at least for some people) the outgroups' social group would become a bigger issue during encounters, I would argue that the familiarity brought on by that hypothesis would not only reduce the number and size of "outgroups", but also reduce the number of people who would react negatively to "outgroups," as well as their susceptibility to race/nation/etc-based propaganda (which, interestingly, your 2nd link seems to suggest)

Anyway, while I think there's some truth here, I do believe the benefits far outweigh the costs - in this instance, but also for the Internet in general, when you consider the other benefits (and risks of course) it brings - accessibility to education, for example.

iancmceachern

3 months ago

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.

FridayoLeary

3 months ago

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!

Sophira

3 months ago

https://www.rightreading.com/blog/language/translation/googl... is an interesting blog post from the time (October 2007) which compares Babelfish (by that point owned by Yahoo!) and Google Translate.

mikejulietbravo

3 months ago

nuances like idioms can and will be solved. wispr flow is already solving a lot of these things via their speech-to-text interface.

as better models are introduced, figurative language, implication, cultural nuancec etc. becomes easier to reconcile.

lukax

3 months ago

Soniox 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.

https://soniox.com/

Disclaimer: I used to work for Soniox

View full discussion on Hacker News

ID: 45287838Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 2:55:49 PM

Want the full context?

Jump to the original sources

Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.

Open link View on HN