How to translate into French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian.

Connect to http://babelfish.altavista.com (the automatic translation service at the AltaVista Search site). In a separate window, connect to the page you want to translate (a Web page or a word processing document or an email message or a newsgroup item).

On the target page, click the left mouse button in the left margin beside the starting point in the text, and drag your cursor down over a couple paragraphs (about a third of a typed page). That will select those paragraphs. Then, in the toolbar, click "EDIT", then "COPY" to save the selected text in your Clipboard.

Next, bring up the translation page. Position your cursor over the translation form. Click the right mouse button and then "PASTE". The selected text should now appear in the form.

Below the form, click on the down arrow to select the language pair you want (such as English to French). Then click on "TRANSLATE". The translated text should appear in a second or two.

To save the translated text in a file, click and drag (as above) to select the text; and click on "EDIT" and "COPY" to put it in your Clipboard. Then open a document in your word processor and paste the text there.

Go back to the target original and select the next piece of text. Go back to the translation page, click on "NEW TRANSLATION", paste the text in the new form, and proceed as before. Keep doing this as many times as necessary to translate and save the entire text.

The results should be useful, but they will be far from perfect. (If you are reading this text in a language other than English, you can judge for yourself how good or bad it is.)

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