Babylon
About Babylon
Translation in a Single Click
Babylon Ltd. is a desktop software company, founded in 1997.
Babylon is the leading provider of single-click translation and information access solutions. Babylon 7 is a desktop software that is available for both private users and corporate organizations.
Babylon offers text translation in 17 languages and Wikipedia results in 13 languages, all in a single click.
Babylon's translation and dictionary software offers results from a database of 1,300 sources in 75 languages. The database includes 25 professional dictionaries in 14 languages developed by Babylon's own linguistic team: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Hebrew, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Dutch, Russian, Korean and Swedish.
In addition, Babylon offers add-on premium content from world-renowned dictionary publishers, including Oxford University Press, Britannica, Merriam-Webster, Larousse, Vox, Langenscheidt, Pons, Van Dale, Melhoramentos and Taishukan.
Babylon is sold worldwide in over 168 countries with a user base of over 35 million desktop installations.
Babylon corporate customers include industry leaders such as Avnet, Daimler Chrysler, Ericsson, Ernst & Young, Fujitsu Siemens, Gillette/Braun, IBM, John Deere, Lufthansa, Motorola, Nestlé France, Océ, Petrobras, Philips, UBS, Xerox and many more.
Comments
john locke said:
verry good
Written: Fri Nov 06 06:55:23 UTC 2009
rkunkel said:
I have been using this software tool for many months now. I find it to be an indispensable aide: Spelling, word usage, etiology, nearly everything you wanted to know about a specific word is there; even short phrases, euphemisms, colloquialisms, words in the vernacular, and expressions may be accessible through one or more of the multitude of add on or add in languages, dictionaries, encyclopedias, industry specific term dictionaries, all in an extremely wide variety of languages, and which are freely available from either within the program itself or from the Babylon website. All these elements make Babylon one of the most versatile language learning assistance programs that I have encountered in over 50 years as a student, researcher, scholar, computer programmer, and general computer user with a passion for learning languages. Note that all of the foregoing pertains primarily to single words and short phrases! I realize that, in my enthusiasm for this product, I probably come off sounding like a commercial for this software product, yet such is not the case. It is, quite simply, that I have used Babylon, through several incarnations (revisions), with great pleasure and even greater success. Ease of use is top rate! Using the program is simple, straight forward and quite intuitive. The Getting Started walk-through is excellent, and Help, if ever required, is quite thorough. If the forgoing has not convinced you of the quality and usefulness of the Babylon software product, then perhaps the rest of what the program is capable of will. Accept that what I have described so far exists and works very well. Now, throw in extended, even quite lengthy, text translation, web page translation, a spell checker, a units converter that works with measurement, time and currencies (the values of which can be updated prior to or during use), plus the ability to add dictionaries, encyclopedias, even material from Wikipedia on the fly, and you have yourself one very powerful and useful piece of language learning software. As with any translation engine, Babylon is not perfect. For instance, its' ability to translate Farsi (Persian) into English is sometimes better accomplished by treating the Farsi as Arabic and translate from Arabic into English. The reverse may also apply in certain situations. Similar situations arise between Egyptian Arabic and Arabic in general. Regardless, a very reasonable, if not down right good, translation can be obtained using Babylon, your own ability to think and reason, a little ingenuity, and you will be able to get done what you want. The tools are all there, they just have to be put to use. One other small point, which will be of little or no concern unless you are a ForX heavyweight, is that the currency converter is quite limited in the currencies that it will handle. The main North American, European, and Middle Eastern countries are represented, however, there is a dearth of currencies from most of the nations of Africa and may of the countries of the Far East. This, I feel, needs to be addressed, and the sooner the better, if for no other reason than the currencies covered nowhere nearly approach the languages covered by the program. It may seem a small thing, yet it is attention to small details, such as currency coverage, that separate good software from great software. If you have not yet tried the Babylon product, currently (i.e., as of June 22, 2009) at versions 8.5, then you owe it to yourself to download an evaluation copy immediately, if not sooner. Head over to http://www.babylon.com/ to get your hands on the evaluation version of the software. This is one evaluation that you will find truly useful, especially if, as I am, you are struggling to learn Irish, Farsi, and Arabic all at the same time and as quickly as possible. In short, enjoy! Richard N. Kunkel
Written: Wed Jun 24 16:59:36 UTC 2009
rkunkel said:
I have been using this software tool for many months now. I find it to be an indispensable aide: Spelling, word usage, etiology, nearly everything you wanted to know about a specific word is there; even short phrases, euphemisms, colloquialisms, words in the vernacular, and expressions may be accessible through one or more of the multitude of add on or add in languages, dictionaries, encyclopedias, industry specific term dictionaries, all in an extremely wide variety of languages, and which are freely available from either within the program itself or from the Babylon website. All these elements make Babylon one of the most versatile language learning assistance programs that I have encountered in over 50 years as a student, researcher, scholar, computer programmer, and general computer user topped off with a love of learning languages. And all this pertains primarily to single words and short phrases! I realize that, in my enthusiasm for this product, I probably come off sounding like a commercial for this software product, yet such is not the case. It is, quite simply, that I have used Babylon, through several incarnations (revisions), with great pleasure and even greater success. Ease of use is top rate, using the program is easy, straight forward and quite intuitive. The Getting Started walk-through is excellent, and Help, if ever required, is quite thorough. If the forgoing has not convinced you of the quality and usefulness of the Babylon software product, then perhaps the rest of what the program is capable of will. Accept that what I have described so far exists and works very well. Now, throw in extended text translation, web page translation, a spell checker, a units converter that works with measurement, time and currencies (the values of which can be updated prior to or during use), plus the ability to add dictionaries, encyclopedias, even material from Wikipedia on the fly, and you have yourself one very powerful and useful piece of language learning software. As with any translation engine, Babylon is not perfect. For instance, its' ability to translate Farsi (Persian) into English is sometimes better accomplished by treating the Farsi as Arabic and translate from Arabic into English. The reverse may also apply in certain situations. Similar situations arise between Egyptian Arabic and Arabic in general. Regardless, a very reasonable, if not down right good, translation can be obtained using Babylon, your own ability to think and reason, a little ingenuity, and you will be able to get done what you want. The tools are all there, they just have to be put to use. One other small point, which will be of little or no concern unless you are a ForX heavyweight, is that the currency converter is quite limited in the currencies that it will handle. The main North American, European, and Middle Eastern countries are represented, however, there is a dearth of currencies from most of the nations of Africa and may of the countries of the Far East. This, I feel, needs to be addressed, and the sooner the better, if for no other reason than the currencies covered nowhere nearly approach the languages covered by the program. It may seem a small thing, yet it is attention to small details, such as currency coverage, that separate good software from great software. If you have not yet tried the Babylon product, currently (i.e., as of June 22, 2009) at versions 8.5, then you owe it to yourself to download an evaluation copy immediately, if not sooner. Head over to http://www.babylon.com/ to get your hands on the evaluation version of the software. This is one evaluation that you will find truly useful, especially if, as I am, you are struggling to learn Irish, Farsi, and Arabic all at the same time and as quickly as possible. In short, enjoy! Richard N. Kunkel
Written: Wed Jun 24 16:49:25 UTC 2009