FOR FRENCH, GERMAN, PORTUGUESE, ITALIAN AND SPANISH SPEAKERS ONLY.

AltaVista, a popular internet search engine, has a new feature that allows people to translate any text or any Web page into different languages. Here's how you can use this new technology to translate our site, www.photosource.com, into French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish.

First, head to "www.altavistadigital.com" We see some info about AltaVista, and their search box, along with some buttons, one of which is called "Translations." That's where we want to go.

Click "Translations." Now we see a box where you can enter text or URLs of Web pages to be translated. Since we want to translate www.photosource.com, we type "http://www.photosource.com" in the box.

Pick a language. From the Pull-down Menu you can select to translate English to any of the languages offered. (There's also the option of translating other languages into English, but that doesn't do much for an English site.)

Click "Translate." Now AltaVista will go off to our site, get the page information, translate the words into the language you selected, and pass that along to you. It takes just slightly longer than if you were to load our page directly.

When you click on a link on such a translated page, you're brought back to the AltaVista Translator and asked if you'd like the page you clicked to be translated as well. Assuming you do, just hit the "Translate" button again. This means every time you go to a new page you will end up clicking twice instead of once, but for those of us who don't speak English, or just to check out the technology, it's worth it.

Owen Swerkstrom. Owen is Webmaster at PhotoSource International.

Ed. Note: Whoops, translating on the Web (by "machine") is still far from perfect. We tested it in French with our photographer friend in Geneva, Switzerland, Jean Kratzer, who also works as a freelance simultaneous interpreter. The response -- "I have seen machine translation many times and it still has a LONG way to go. Would you send out a robot to accompany a writer and take the pictures for a National Geographic story?" 'Nuf said. -RE

LONG LIVE PICTURES

The earliest communications we have from prehistory are pictures -- not text. The paintings adorning the walls of the caves of early man tell us something of their existence. At the dawn of recorded history, the hieroglyphics of the Phoenicians and Egyptians are, in effect, pictographs.

Our modern institutions have realized the importance of pictures by preserving early representations, whether they be folk art paintings or 17th century woodcuts. The Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC is a good example of where a vast collection is being amassed. The Smithsonian Office of Horticulture, for instance has cataloged more than 700,000 images. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory has a collection of over 600,000 images documenting the history of astronomy.

Many American museums are digitizing their collections for the delivery of information. The Smithsonian plans to have 3 million of its images on-line and accessible by the year 2000.

If your stock photography speaks of the culture we live in, your photos might one day be included in the Smithsonian collection. -RE