"The NTB0104 is a 4-bit, dual supply translating transceiver with auto direction sensing, that enables bidirectional voltage level translation."

The auto direction sensing part sounds interesting. If all I needed was just level shifting, then 74HCT can manage quite well, but these chips might be able to solve the data direction problem while still taking care of power dissipation for inadvertently loaded outputs, and the required noise immunity of a transceiver.

But there seems to be two issues.

1) There is no mention of any hysterese on inputs.

2) I'm not sure if they are strong enough for driving ribbon-cable signals.

"In a static state, the output drivers of the NTB0104 can maintain a defined
output level, but the output architecture is designed to be weak, so that
they can be overdriven by an external driver when data on the bus starts
flowing in the opposite direction."

So I see lots of potential for them - the price is nice too - but probably only for on-board level conversion.

From the datasheets it's a bit hard to figure out their actual drive capabilities, so I should probably get some samples to play around with, even if I do not think they are usable for this specific project.