Can we speak in different languages?

I think I've read mention of translators in SL, but I can't find it in search. I IM'd someone whose land I thought was being innundated with build junk, and turns out they are Spanish and can't understand me and I can't understand them. I finally used an online translator, but I still have no clue what I said (LOL.)

Is the ability in game somehow? This does happen occasionally.

In world, there are a couple different devices that do this to various degrees. Basically, it is a script in some object you wear that listens to chat, makes an http request to some translation site, and then says the translation it gets back.

I haven't really used them much, but I have been around and they work OK.

Ideally, you can turn it on and off and change languages, and aim it at specific people. So, if I am speaking Spanish to you, then what I say gets translated into English for you, and what you say gets ranslated into Spanish for me.

One of my alts has the free Babbler, but I don't remember who makes it. I can't get in-world until this evening, but I'll check if someone doesn't get you a better answer before then.

You can get a free babbler from

Phreak isle 116,133,21

Babble Fish.

And from SLExchange, at http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=138377

(I have no idea why I couldn't get this to come up in an SLExchange search. Google found it instead.)

Michael means "Babelfish", which is another similar product.

I've used the Universal Translator, which I bought off SLX. I've only used it twice, with limited success I have to say - although one of those occasions was in Brazilian Portuguese, which I think it found difficult to handle (apparently I offered to fondle his grandmother's grenades .......)
Inc

Bet that put a smile on his grandmothers face

Most of the babblers that I've run across do just that... it's really hard to get intonations and meanings across, especially if the person wearing the babbler types in abbreviated words. I'm fairly okay in French, and I tend to speak very correctly because that's how I learned. The French speakers that I've met in SL, however, have their own funky ways of typing which I'm figuring out, but which the babblers mangle. (Like, for example, I might type "coz" instead of "because" if I'm feeling really lazy. The babbler would never pick this up.)

I have on one occation met someone who talked to me thru a translator.

The success was very limited.

Here are some of the phrases which was presented to me by the translator, I have marked the original text with A and the translated text with B :

A:falas qual lingua!
B:you say to which lingua!

A: que fazes aqui?
B: what here you make?

A: I dance tu gostas?
B: I dances you likes?

A: eu ser striper???
B: I to be to striper?

As you can see, the translated result was decipherable, but the conversation was not easy.

When I see those tranlations, the first thing that comes to my mind is :
"My hovercraft is full of eels"

I use the "Babbler" HUD on occasion, to talk to people in French or Japanese. It's about the same as using the web-based "Babelfish" translator on copied and pasted text, but it does it on the fly. The success is limited, but it's usually better than just shrugging and striving to indicate you don't understand their language. I was originally given a copy by a French Player who spoke no English. It made it easier for me to chat with him.

As it happens, I do speak a little Spanish, French, German and Japanese, and on occasion I have chatted with people the old fashioned way, no translator, in their native language.

Usually in either case I make frequent checks in my 'real book' translation dictionaries, to puzzle out some words and phrases that don't translate well.

max case, the creator of babbler, seems not to be in slx anymore.