Google, Yahoo! BabelFish use math principles to translate documents online

The guide was written in German, which Casey cannot read, so she typed bits of it into an Internet translation tool. "It occurs nobody endlschleudern, however, intercatapults" is one result she got. Stumped, she pressed some buttons and eventually managed to wash her clothes, in an elongated wash cycle that kept her pinned down for three hours. Libby's quandary will come as no surprise to anyone who has tried to use a computer to translate things. For decades, machine translation was mostly useful if you were trying to be funny.