So when indignant officials at the Dutch foreign ministry received an email from a group of Israeli journalists that began, "Helloh bud, enclosed five of the questions in honor of the foreign minister: The mother your visit in Israel is a sleep to the favor or to the bed your mind on the conflict are Israeli Palestinian," they might perhaps have guessed what had happened.

Sadly, they did not. Nor did the follow-up questions ("Why we did not heard on mutual visits of main the states of Israel and Holland, this is in the country of this" and "What in your opinion needs to do opposite the awful the Iranian of Israel") enlighten them. And now, according to the Jerusalem Post, the aforementioned journalists' planned fact-finding trip to the Netherlands as guests of the Dutch government is in jeopardy. "How could this email possibly have been sent?" an anguished Israeli diplomat asked the paper. "These journalists have sparked a major, major incident."

Blame Babel Fish, bud: it mistakes the Hebrew word for "if" (ha'im) for the Hebrew word for "mother" (ha'ima), and reckons "the Dome of the Rock" can reasonably be rendered in English as "bandages of the knitted domes". So let that be a lesson to you. Or, as Babel Fish would have it in German, "Lassen Sie so einfach, daß eine Lektion zu Ihnen seien Sie." Which apparently means: "Leave so simple that a lesson to you are you." Amazing, the internet.

· This article was amended on Wednesday November 14 2007. The internet translation site used by the Israeli journalists mentioned above was babelfish.com, not babelfish.yahoo.com. This has been corrected.