Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"We [science fiction writers] always wanted to believe in "private sector" space -- hucksters make better characters than a government does."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Babel Fish | ||
| A living fish which, when placed in your ear, will live there and translate any form of language for you. |
Yes, this part of the book was the inspiration for naming the AltaVista website translation feature. At this point in the novel, Arthur Dent finds himself in a Vogon spacecraft. Their voices are not exactly music to the human ear.
| "You'll need to have this fish in your ear." "I beg your pardon?" asked Arthur. Ford was holding up a small glass jar which quite clearly had a small yellow fish wriggling around in it…He gasped in terror at what sounded like a man trying to gargle while fighting off a pack of wolves. |
| Technovelgy from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
by Douglas Adams. Published by Harmony Books in 1979 Additional resources -
|
Once he had the Babel Fish in his ear, Arthur understood perfectly. The Babel Fish lives on brainwave radiation from every source but its host. It then excretes enegry in the form of exactly the correct brainwaves needed by its host to understand what was just said.
The Babel Fish reverses the problem defined by its namesake; the original Tower of Babel (according to the Bible) inspired the Deity to confuse human beings by making them unable to understand each other.
Compare to the language translation machine from The Coming Race (1889) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the translatophone from My Translatophone (1901), by Frank Stockton and the Language Rectifier from Ralph 124c 41 + (1911) by Hugo Gernsback. See also the more modern Translator Discs from Ringworld (1970) by Larry Niven and the Babel fish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) by Douglas Adams.
An interesting variation on this idea is the artificially produced speech, mechanically produced speech, from Hotel Cosmos (1938) by Raymond Z. Gallun.
The Babel fish is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 7 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
More Ideas
and Technology by Douglas Adams
Tech news articles related to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tech news articles related to works by Douglas Adams
Babel Fish-related
news articles:
- Realistic Translation With The Waverly Labs Ambassador
- Babelfish Necklace: Environment Translator
- Douglas Adams Your Babel Fish Is Ready - The Pilot By Waverly
- Translate One2One From IBM's Watson Your Communication Solution
| Will Whales Be Our First Contact? |
| NYC/Dublin Portal Fails To Meet 'Guardian Of Forever' Standards |
| Holobox? Who Doesn't Want A Home Hologram? |
| EBS-260 Handjet Free Hand Dot Matrix Printer |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
'If the biological robots were not living creatures, they were certainly very good imitations.'
"Everybody and his dog, it seemed, wanted to live out in the country; transportation and communication were no longer isolating factors."
'... the new typewriter that could be talked to, and which transposed the spoken sound into typed words.'
'... underneath they consisted of networks of cooling tubes against the skin.'
'My cars talk to one another. I have no doubt about it...'
'... the imprint of her image on the telephoto cell.'
