Send your WebWorld queries to webworld@ irishtimes.ie or by post to William Hederman, The Irish Times, D'Olier Street, Dublin 2.
Can I get foreign language pages translated into English at a website? - Frank Malone, Co Waterford
Yes, there are a few web sites at which you can have text translated from English into one of several foreign languages and vice versa. These are generally free of charge: you just type or paste in a phrase or sentence, click and the translation is done instantly.
www.dictionary.com provides this service and is also useful as an English dictionary, a thesaurus and a directory of online language-related resources. This type of site is useful for students who are researching something on the web and come across a page in a language they don't understand.
In the case of dictionary.com, you can paste the URL (address of the page) into the box provided and have the page displayed within seconds with all the text in the language of your choice. Try it with a site you know well - it's good for a laugh.
It can also be used to make the translation process more interesting or as an aide to translation, in the same way that a traditional dictionary can. However, students are advised not to use this type of service as a substitute for working it out themselves when doing translation exercises for school or college. Quite aside from the fact that it's cheating, it defeats the purpose of the exercise, the translation is likely to be unreliable and your teacher/lecturer will know something is up.
To give you an idea of the kind of results you can expect, here are before and after versions of the first sentence of a sports story from last Thursday's Irish Times, run through the English-French translator and back again:
"In times past, the AIB League finale might have been considered a last-ditch passport to far-flung southern destinations with a touring Irish squad."
"In a few periods after, the finale of league of AIB could be considered a passport of lastditch to the vast southernmost destinations with an Irish group of tourism."
A more educational, and ultimately more useful, service is provided by www.handyserv.com, which offers "free access to 21 bilingual dictionaries". You can enter a phrase or sentence of up to 20 words and you will be given various suggestions for each word, with grammatical explanations.
Can I send an e-mail from my mobile phone? - Susan Kelly, Co Donegal.
Yes. Go to "write/create message" on your mobile phone, as if you were going to send a text message to another mobile. Key in the e-mail address, followed by a space, followed by your message. For the @ symbol, as well as for other punctuation marks, press the * key and scroll through the options presented. Press OK to send, and when you're asked for a number, enter 086 605 5506. This will work from both the Esat and Eircell networks, but you must be in the Republic of Ireland. In order to send a message in the other direction, i.e. from an e-mail account to a mobile phone, register at www.skycom.ie, where you can register and get instructions on how to do it.
