Though the idea of the "Babelfish" - a thing able to translate between any two languages on the fly - was created by the author Douglas Adams as a handy solution to the question of how intergalactic travellers could understand each other, it could be reality within 25 years. At least, that is, for human language. Prof Nigel Shadbolt, a close associate of the web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, says that the idea of automatic machine translation "on the fly" is achievable before the world wide web turns 50. Shadbolt also forecasts that future changes to the web will mean people will be "connected all the time" to medical diagnostic systems – but also that search companies including Google and China's Baidu may face challenges as web use shifts from the desktop to handheld and mobile devices. Having first used the web in 1993, via an early version of the Mosaic browser while on a visit to Canada, Shadbolt now thinks that it opens up huge possibilities for artificial intelligence systems built by connecting computers across the web - so-called cloud computing - that will be able to enhance daily life.

IN one famous episode in the British comedy series Monty Python a foreign-looking tourist clad in an outmoded leather trenchcoat appears at the entrance to a London shop. He marches up to the man behind the counter, solemnly consults a phrase book, and in a thick Middle European accent declares, "My hovercraft ... is full of eels!" Eventually the scene shifts to the Old Bailey courthouse, where the prisoner at the bar stands accused of intent to cause a breach of the peace for having published an English-Hungarian phrase book full of spurious translations. For example, the Hungarian phrase "Can you direct me to the railway station" is translated as "Please fondle my buttocks." This episode is brought to mind by some recently available computer programs that claim to provide automatic translation between English and a number of other languages. Translation software that runs on mainframe computers has been used by government agencies for several decades, but with the advent of the Pentium chip, which packs the power of a mainframe into a desktop, such software can now easily be run on a personal computer.