Babylon: Is It Worth the Download?
Dateline: 06/05/00Trying to find the right word when you're translating into Spanish can be a bother: Printed dictionaries often have tiny type or don't have the latest additions to the language, and online dictionaries can take some time to use and aren't available when you're offline.
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Now comes Babylon, a freeware dictionary that promises to make your life easier, not just in Spanish but also in 10 other languages, including Hebrew, French, Chinese, Italian, Swedish, German and Portuguese. You can even use it to give English definitions of English words. It is available from Babylon directly, or from its partner sites including CNNenEspañol.com.
If you're about checking out Babylon, it's important to keep in mind first what Babylon does not do. It doesn't translate sentences, only words and some phrases. And it doesn't translate words from Spanish to English, just from English to Spanish. In fact, it wasn't designed for people learning Spanish. It was designed primarily for foreign-language speakers who are reading English and need a quick translation of the words they're reading. If you see an English word on your screen and don't know it's Spanish equivalent, simply right-click on the word and the word or words in Spanish (or the other supported language of your choice) will show up.
For its targeted audience, Babylon works quite well. If you were a Spanish speaker who didn't have a large English vocabulary, you could right-click (or take a different user-selected action) a word on an English-language Web site to get a choice of possible translations. Although Babylon doesn't take context into account, someone who know some English could usually figure out the word quickly since you would know the context. You can also type English words into a blank space to get the translations.
For English speakers who are learning Spanish (or one of the other supported languages), the software is much less useful. If I were translating this article into Spanish, for example, and wanted to translate the word "useful," I would get seven choices, not all of which work in all contexts. Only a list of possible words is given; unlike some dictionaries, Babylon doesn't present sample sentences or an abundance of idioms.
But it does handle English idioms. If you were looking for a Spanish phase that means "to get on," for example, you can type those words in a space and get (in this case) three translations. And the dictionary seems to have a fairly good selection of words and idioms. I was able to, for example, get a translation for "double click."
Babylon can be useful if you think you know the word you're looking for in Spanish but aren't sure. For example, you might remember that the word for "fever" is something like "fiber," but you aren't quite sure. Try out the word, and one of the three choices is fiebre, the word you're looking for. Unfortunately, Babylon doesn't tell you whether it's masculine or feminine. (Of course, the target user wouldn't need that information.)
Babylon uses minimal computer resources, although you must be using Windows 95 or later. In less than a megabyte, you can download a program that will get the words you're looking for through an online connection. In my experience, it usually took a second or two to get the answer. Or you can download dictionaries for each language you want to translate; the translations then come on the screen instantly. The Spanish dictionary is about a five-megabyte download.
The software also has a few other gadgets that might make it worth the quick download for some people. You can use it to quickly access a search engine or online encyclopedia, or you can use it to instantly determine currency exchange rates or the time in other countries.
All in all, Babylon is a nifty little program for the people people who don't know English well. But if you're looking for something that will help you translate into Spanish, its use is far more limited..
