The very first instance of babelfish that I’ve seen, on screen, is in “Space Sweepers” a KDrama on Netflix.
In the show, many characters speak different languages and they all have a pod in their ear that does real time translations. The spoken languages I think I recall were Korean, Russian, English, French. Everything was subtitled in English (my selection). The conversations were fast paced and it really seemed like exactly what you’d expect from babelfish. I know StarTrek had universal translators but not the same. In Space Sweepers, they were speaking their native languages and that is exactly what we heard. It was kind of shocking and pretty cool. We are not that far from something similar. Kee Nethery > On Jul 15, 2026, at 7:16 AM, David Bovill via use-livecode > <[email protected]> wrote: > > I see a collection of stories Georges - I'd love to connect you to the > writers form H2G2 and also the creative writing communities and book towns > that we have been engaging. How such interactive stories are reimagined as > Guides - should naturally build upon / learn from the history of such > multimedia story telling - and take it somewhere else. They should of > course be in many natural languages - as we have the Babelfish. > PS: I “knew” Douglas Adams. Long ago I decided to make a special tie dye t-shirt for Kagi’s first customer. [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> in London. Email bounced, postal mail bounced. Wondered, hitchhikers guide douglas adams? Saw him at an SF MacWorld and asked him if he had ever bought Anarchie and he said multiple times. Confirmed he was once [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> and asked his shirt size. He said as large as possible and gave me his postal address. We made up two 3XL shirts with “First Customer” embroidered on them and mailed them to him. Six months later at an Apple party in NYC, I was in the crowd going one direction, saw him coming the other direction. We caught eyes Me: Did you get the shirts? Him: Yes, too small for me but women like them as sleepwear. Me: OK, we’ll get bigger. And the crowd carried him away. The fun thing about that conversation was there was no conversation set up. It was as if our conversation 6 months earlier just had a 6 month pause. Called the T-Shirt company to get 4XL and 5XL tie dye shirts made. Me: We’d like another order but with 4XL and 5XL tie dye shirts. Him: No one makes 100% cotton t-shirts that big and we can only tie dye on 100% cotton. Me: Bummer, I’ll let Douglas Adams know we can’t do it. Him: YOU MEAN THE HITCHHIKERS GUIDE DOUGLAS ADAMS? Me: Yes Him: I’LL FIND SOME! And he did. I mailed them off to Douglas Adams in southern california and next thing I heard he had had a heart attack. Bummer. Sorry he died so young. He’d be so thrilled to use Wikipedia on a smartphone. _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
