The 15th century archives of the Chancellery of France record only three cases of English barbarity during the English occupation.

In September 1424 Sander Russell, somewhat the worse for drink, stabbed the officer sent to arrest him. Russell was pardoned by young Henry 6th. In October, Richard Quatre and another Englishman assaulted the door of one Jehanette la Bardine (a "femme amoureuse"), and in turn were pelted with stones by the lady, resulting in Richard's death. Jehanette was likewise pardoned. In July 1430 Nicholas Say and Richard Geppes were arrested for shoplifting and fraud, and imprisoned.

One year later, Francois de Montcorbier, known as Villon, was born -- the master poet of medieval Paris. Of Villon's work at least one famous line rings familiarly to most literate English-speakers: "But or are snows of antan?"

What's that you say? You don't know that line? Well, how about this: "Where are the snows of yesteryear?"

The 1st version demonstrates that American barbarity of the 20th century may be worse than that of the English of the 15th. For it is the translation offered via AltaVista's translation engine of "Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?" the haunting refrain of "Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis." That title is translated by AltaVista as "Ballade of the ladies of time formerly."

This is a roundabout way of saying that translation technology is far from perfect. As Sam Johnson said of a dog walking on his hind legs, "It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." Despite its limitations I am quite impressed by AltaVista's capabilities.

The Web's internationalization is now accessible to all of us. Go to AltaVista and in the "Search the Web for documents in" box, select one of 20 languages. Search on any subject, then at the end of a URL (uniform resource locator) description, click Translate. The English version usually provides the gist of the article, if not its subtleties.

Click the Services menu item on AltaVista's page, then select the last item, Translation, from the following page, and you'll get a box where you can enter or paste any text you wish to have translated. Here's how it translated the 1st sentence of this column into French: "Les 15èmes archives de siècle du Chancellery de l'enregistrement de la France seulement trois cas de barbarie anglaise pendant le métier anglais." Not bad, and its confusion of the word "occupation" as "metier" (trade or profession), where the French word in context is the same as in English, is reasonable.

Re-translating the same sentence back from French to English resulted in: "The 15th century files of the Chancellery of France record only three boxes of English barbarity during the English occupation." Except for confusing "cases" with "boxes" it's neatly done.

A uni-directional version of the translation software, which works for up to five kilobytes at a time, may be downloaded for $29, and a bi-directional one for $49 (per language -- French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese).

I think AltaVista has made a good start on debabelizing the Web. Unless one has frequent need of translation from medieval French.

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