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The Babelfish
"After politics and the BabelFish, religion is the third greatest cause of war ever known to the Galaxy"

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy
The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe
Life, the Universe, and Everything
So long, and thanks for all the fish
Mostly harmless
The lost chapters of The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
The Meaning of Liff
Starship Titanic (By Terry Jones & Douglas Adams)
Last Chance to See ... (Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine)

Arthur thought about this.
     "Ford," he said.
     "Yeah?"
     "What's this fish doing in my ear?"
     "It's translating for you. It's a Babel fish. Look it up in the book if you like."
     He tossed over The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and then curled himself up into
a foetal ball to prepare himself for the jump.
     At that moment the bottom fell out of Arthur's mind.
     His eyes turned inside out. His feet began to leak out of the top of his head.
      The room folded flat about him, spun around, shifted out of existence and left him
sliding into his own navel.
      They were passing through hyperspace.
      "The Babel fish," said The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow
and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave
energy not from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental
frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the
mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought
frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has
supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear
you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech
patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your
mind by your Babel fish.
      Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly
useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as
the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God."
      "The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God,
'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
      "'But,' says Man, 'The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have
evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you
don't. QED.'
      "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of
logic.
      "'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is
white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
      "Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but
that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central
theme of his bestselling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God.
      "Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to
communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloddier wars
than anything else in the history of creation."

      One of the men, who had been standing slightly forward of the rest of the group
and who might therefore have been their leader, stepped forward. His face was quiet and
calm, almost serene.
      "Ugghhhuuggghhhrrrr uh uh ruh uurgh," he said quietly.
      This caught Arthur by surprise. He had grown so used to receiving an instantaneous
and unconscious translation of everything he heard via the Babel Fish lodged in his ear
that he had ceased to be aware of it, and he was only reminded of its presence now by
the fact that it didn't seem to be working. Vague shadows of meaning had flickered at the
back of his mind, but there was nothing he could get any firm grasp on. He guessed,
correctly as it happens, that these people had as yet evolved no more than the barest
rudiments of language, and that the Babel Fish was therefore powerless to help. He
glanced at Ford, who was infinitely more experienced in these matters.
      "I think," said Ford out of the corner of his mouth, "he's asking us if we'd mind
walking on round the edge of the village."
      A moment later, a gesture from the man-creature seemed to confirm this.
      "Ruurgggghhhh urrgggh; urgh urgh (uh ruh) rruurruuh ug," continued the man-
creature.
      "The general gist," said Ford, "as far as I can make out, is that we are welcome to
continue our journey in any way we like, but if we would walk round his village rather than
through it it would make them all very happy."
      "So what do we do?"
      "I think we make them happy," said Ford.