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| Home › AltaVista Help › Babel Fish › FAQ |
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| How Can Babel Fish Help Me? | ||
Use Babel Fish to:
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| What Documents and Text Translate Best? | ||
Try newspaper sites. Newspapers are typically well written, use proper grammar, and translate well. When you write for automatic translation, use short sentences and avoid slang, idiomatic expressions, and unnecessary synonyms. | ||
| Why Are Some Translations Lesser Quality? | ||
Translating languages is a very complex task. The automatic translator works best when the text you wish to translate uses proper grammar. Slang, misspelled words, poorly placed punctuation, and complex or lengthy sentences can all cause a page to be translated incorrectly. Expect Babel Fish to allow you to grasp the general intent of the original, not to produce a polished translation. By the way, you cannot get a good idea of the quality of a translation by translating the translated text. The more translations a piece of text goes through, the further the resulting words will be from the original.
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| How Accurate Is a Babel Fish Translation? | ||
Machine translation produces reasonable results in many cases. But you should not rely on it. If you want to send a translated text to another person or use it in correspondence, always explain that you are using an automatic translator named Babel Fish and append or reference the original text. This acknowledgement will put the translation into the right context and will help you avoid embarrassing misunderstandings. When it's important to have an accurate translation, ask a human translator to polish the Babel Fish translation. | ||
| How Much Can Babel Fish Translate at Once? | ||
Babel Fish is designed to translate up to about 5K of text at a time (about 800 words or two standard, double-spaced pages). If you enter text that exceeds the limit or if you attempt to translate a very long Web page (over 5 K), the service translates up to the limit and then stops. Occasionally, a Web page you want to translate is on a slow server or the server has a poor network connection. Check by going to the Web address without using Babel Fish. If the original page is displayed very slowly or not at all, the problem is with the Web site you are trying to read. Try translating it another time. If you have copied a text passage that exceeds the 1000 character limit, both the translation and the original text you pasted into the translation box will be cut off. Copy and paste in small sections and translate each section separately. If you don't believe that the text is too long or the Web site server too slow, try your translation again. If the translation stops abruptly again, let us know. Our servers may have a temporary problem. | ||
| Why Do I Get "Translation Ends Here" or "Time Out" in the Translated Page? | ||
Translation requires significant resources on our servers. To serve as many users as possible, we translate a maximum of 5k of text. If the page exceeds this limit, you see "Translation ends here" in the text. There is also a time limit per sentence. If translation of a sentence takes longer than the allowed time, you see "Time Out" in the text and the translation of the sentence is likely to be poor.
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| Why Do I Get an Error Message? | ||
We've tried to explain each error as fully as possible and tell you how to recover. Often, you should just try your translation again because the system was overloaded or down for maintenance. Sometimes a Web page is inaccessible or has content that the system cannot recognize. If you encounter an error message that is not helpful, please report it and the circumstances in which it was displayed. You will be helping us improve our service. | ||
| How Can I Copy and Paste Text Into Babel Fish? | ||
To copy text, put the cursor at the beginning of the passage and left-click the mouse button. Hold down the Shift key, move the cursor to the end of the passage, and click the mouse button. Now press Control-C (Windows) or Command-C (Macintosh). To paste the passage into the Translate box, click in the box and press Control-V (Windows) or Command-V (Macintosh). You don't have to type long Web addresses! Just copy and paste them using this same technique.
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| How Can I Prevent a Proper Noun from Being Translated? | ||
Just type a period in front of any proper name or other word that should not be translated. For example, notice what happens when we type two sentences in English and translate them into French, Italian, and German:
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| How Can I Use My Physical U.S. Keyboard to Type Non-English Characters? | ||
At the Translate box, click the link to use an onscreen international keyboard (the World Keyboard) to type accents or special characters. This link also turns your physical U.S. keyboard into the international keyboard of your choice (choose World, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, or Russian from the drop-down list). You can click the keys of the screen "virtual" keyboard. To enter some accents, click first the accent and then the character it appears with. To type capital letters, click the Shift key and then the letter.
If you are a touch typist and you're accustomed to the international keyboard, type directly on the physical keyboard. To return your physical keyboard to U.S. operation, just click the close box on the virtual keyboard. After you close the keyboard, press Control-k to use it again.
Note:To use the World Keyboard, be sure your Windows or Macintosh Control Panel Keyboard is set to English.
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| How Can I Save the Translated Text of Web Site pages? | ||
Follow these instructions to save the HTML file and then edit out HTML commands as necessary. Netscape browsers:
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| Can My Web Site Link to Your Site? | ||
If you want a web address (a specific URL) to appear in the translation box when your site visitors click the link, enter the URL you want in the following box, choose the language, click the Translate button, and use the URL of the resulting page in your link: | ||
| How Can I Enable My Site Visitors to Translate My Page Automatically? | ||
Visit http://uk.altavista.com/help/free/free_searchbox_transl and choose the "Translate your page" box. If you need a highly accurate translation, you must use human translators and create as many separate HTML pages as you have different languages.
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| Can I Get the Translation Software for Personal Use? | ||
Yes! Go to Systran's product page for more information. | ||
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