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After Babel Fish: The promise of cheap translations at the speed of the Web

After Babel Fish: The promise of cheap translations at the speed of the Web

3 comments

·September 18, 2025
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whoisthemachine

> “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

bananaflag

> 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.

jazzypants

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/