In computer news this week:

Lead: It's all Greek to me - handling Foreign websites

Every once in awhile I'll get an email from someone in a foreign country, usually it's some computer question, or comment about something on my website, or maybe even a question about the blues or other music I have on my site.

People always email me in English, and we get into some interesting conversations. But sometimes they refer me to websites they've found either in their native country, or other foreign country, as a source for good information on the subject we're talking about. And here's where it can get really frustrating. It's easy to find a key word or someone's name on any page you go to - even if it's buried in a foreign language. But understanding the context, or the information about the word - in a foreign language - ah there's the rub.

Assuming you use some version of Microsoft's internet explorer - you can save yourself eyestrain and brainstrain by using a built in feature to find the exact word or phrase you're looking for on any webpage. Other browsers of course have similar features. Go to the website and Just click on Edit - and then click on Find on this page - and you can type in your word - and let your browser find the word for you on the web page in an instant. Much much easier than looking for it yourself, and some webpages can go on forever.

So I can find the phrase "Robert Johnson" easily on a French website about the blues, but I can't get much else, as I don't really speak French.

I used google to search for information about French bluesmen, and I found an interesting site about a famous french blues harp player I had never heard of, named Benoit Blue Boy, or maybe it's benwah blue boy. At this website - http://blueboy.free.fr - there's a couple pictures of a guy who looks kind of like a bluesman, but it's all in French and I can't understand much of it.

So now I'll use a free feature of the search engine google.com - which you can all use. Go to google.com, click on Language tools, and on the next page about halfway down there's a box where you can cut and paste in the website address. So I copied and pasted in http://blueboy.free.fr - and in the next box on this page you can choose what languages to translate from, so I click French to English. And then I click on translate.

Google then goes out to that page, reads it, and translates it for you into English. Aha - now it makes sense:

A pioneer of the French blues, always quite prolific: Better artist of blues to the Trophies France Blues 1998. Better type-setter blues French 2001

And it says that this is The only site dedicated to Benoit Blue Servant boy.

So this is a pretty slick feature of google, and the price sure is right.

In nosing around here, I see that you can also translate phrases to and from several foreign languages. So let's say I want to say to this guy:

" It is my pleasure to meet my first French blues harp player. If I ever get to France we'll have to jam."

I can just type this into a box on this google page for translating phrases, and then I can select english to french, and then I click on translate it, and Google translates this phrase into French.

"Il est mon plaisir de rencontrer mon premier joueur français d'harpe de bleus. Si j'arrive jamais en France nous devrons bloquer"

So now if I want to send this guy an email, I can just cut and paste this google french phrase into an email and send it to him.

Only problem is, he'll reply in French,

But that's ok, I can just come back to google and translate it again.

For Raw Bytes, This is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 624-7230