From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Babylon Ltd. is the developer of translation and
dictionary software called Babylon, which gives users instant
translations and information in one click. Babylon Ltd. was
established in 1997. The company has headquarters in Israel and
a subsidiary in Germany, and about 80 employees.
Babylon (program) has a patented
OCR technology and a single-click activation that works in
any Windows program, such as Word, Outlook, Excel, Internet
Explorer and Adobe Reader (PDF documents). When activated,
Babylon opens a small popup window that displays the
translation.
Babylon Ltd. has developed 25 English-based proprietary
dictionaries in 13 languages that are free of charge to users
who have bought the software. These dictionaries have between
50,000 to 150,000 terms, and use a
morphology engine that can recognize words in different
conjugations and inflections.
As well as its own dictionaries, Babylon has over 1200
reference works that are free of charge to Babylon users. These
include general and technical dictionaries and monolingual
glossaries. These titles span over 60 languages and are indexed
under 400 categories covering subjects such as arts, business,
computer, health, law, entertainment, and sports. Many of them
have been compiled and submitted by Babylon users. All may be
accessed free of charge although on the Babylon Online Search
pages
[1].
Since 2006 Babylon provides access to a static version of
Wikipedia in nine language versions (Dutch, English, French,
German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish).
Babylon displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry, and
gives users a direct link to the entire article on
Wikipedia.org.
Babylon Ltd. has partnered with publishers of dictionaries
and encyclopedias, such as
Oxford University Press,
Merriam-Webster,
Encyclopζdia Britannica, Larousse,
Langenscheidt, Van Dale, Melhoramentos, and Taishukan.
Dictionaries from these publishers can be bought for an
additional fee and used with Babylon software.
As well as its translation product, Babylon Ltd. offers a
free translation box to webmasters and affiliates. Babylon has
also developed and offers an information retrieval product for
the business market.
Major shareholder of Babylon Ltd are
Reed Elsevier (LSE:
REL,
NYSE: RUK), and Formula Vision Technologies, a subsidiary of
Formula Systems (NASDAQ:
FORTY).
External links
-
[2] Homepage of Babylon Ltd
-
[3] Listing of Wikipedia versions available on the
Babylon platform
-
[4] Babylon software information in Japanese
Categories:
Software companies |
Online dictionaries and encyclopedias