Fun with Babelfish, Well...Kinda Fun.

There's a reason it's got the name Babel in it. You likely know the story of a group of people in the Bible (the details are a little sketchy for me) who tried to build a tower so high it would reach heaven and they could speak with God. Well, the Big Guy didn't like this (reason is you don't need a tower to reach out and touch Him) so he made it so they all spoke different languages: thus work ceased and the world became the linguistically-fractured place that it is.

Enter Babelfish. At first glance it seems to work magic. You input some text or a webpage and it translates it for you (if you click on a link in the page it automatically translates the new page too)! Fantastic! That is, until you really read the output.

Take a look at this posting of mine from a couple of days ago:

Now the bad news: it looks from this article that Korea is going to get worse before it gets better. Basically: (i) the older, Western educated, powerbrokers in Seoul are being replaced by locally-educated ones (not good, if you've ever looked into the school system here; (ii) the new administration wants to move power from Seoul (the centre of the universe here for over 500 years) to the provinces (where more regional and xenophobic populaces live), and (iii) the new guard is open to North Korea and, quite possibly, the absurd notion of a peaceful and profitable reunification.

Here it is in Korean:

지금 나쁜 소식: 잘 좋아질 전에 한국이 더 나쁘게 얻기 위하여 가고 있다 고에 이 기사에서 본다. 기본적으로: (i) 너가 학교 제도로 이제까지 여기 보면 오래 되는, 서쪽 교양있는 것 의 서울안에powerbrokers현지 교양있는 그들에의해 대체되고 있다 (좋은,; 여기의 (ii) 새로운 행정은 (지역 및 외국인 혐오 서민이 살는 까 곳에) 지방으로 서울 (우주의 센터500년간 이상)에서 힘을 이동하고 싶고, (iii) 신임 보초는 평화롭고 유리한 재통일의 북한 그리고, 확실히 가능하게, 황당한 관념에 열려있는다.

And here it is Babelfished back into English:

Now bad news: Before getting better well, in order to get badly Korea compared to that it is going, it sees from this article. Basically: (i) you here see until now with school system and long you become, by them who are powerbrokers local culture inside Seoul of the thing which is west culture you are transferring, (it is good,; Yu Gi Ui (ii) the new administration peels and (the area and the foreigner hatred populace the flesh) Seoul (500 years centers of outer space above for) from force it wants moving toward a region in the place, (iii) the new guard peaceful Rob North Korea of the re-unity which separates it is being opened in the conception which absurd and, is possible positively, is.

Huh? Ya, not quite perfect. But, if you have some text or a few pages where you want to get a (very, very) rough idea of what is going on this can be a start. Somehow I think Supernib (a copyeditor here in Seoul) will find a lot of similarities between this free web-applet and some of the stuff she gets to clean up after professional Korean translators have it.