Yesterday I fired up Mozilla Firefox
and was seduced into a bit of tourism by the invitation to get a little add-on, a gadget, a tweek, a little bit of bling. I chose Babelfish, the translation thingy. Because as I've started to drift around the Blogosphere - sometimes the language, it ain't mine. Sometimes it's Italian, or Croatian, or... I don't know yet.
And you know where the name Babel Fish comes from? From Douglas Adams' "Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy" - where the Babel Fish is a small, yellow, ... well ... fish, which is also a universal translator. You put it in your ear and it translates the words of another language into your own, simultaneously and I suppose, fishily .... because every character who uses one goes.... Eeeyouugh!
I really liked the "Hitchhiker". On the radio that is. It just doesn't work for me as somebody else's visual. Nobody's tv or film version I like. But in those ancient days ... when vinyl was king ... the first buyable version of Hitchhiker came out on an LP. A flat vinyl disc that was played at 33rpm. And I went to Dean St Records. And I queued in front of the man himself... and I bought a signed copy. Which I still have.
How much do I love sci-fi?
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