Babylon Ltd
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, Encyclopædia 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).
