Monday, October 25, 2010

Lost in the translation

http://tashian.com/multibabel/


Enter a sentence or two and this translation engine will convert it into a foreign language then back into English many times. 
So what starts out as something plain English can end up being a lot of fun.
My example:
Original English Text:
Now is the time for all men to come to the aid of his country.

Became:
The Now is the hour, so that their country comes all the men empreg.


Crazy! From the site:
"What happens when an English phrase is translated (by computer) back and forth among five different languages? The authors of the Systran language translation software probably never intended this application of their program. Today's translation software is almost good enough to turn grammatically correct, slang-free text from one language into grammatically incorrect, barely readable approximations in another. But the software is not equipped for 10 consecutive translations of the same piece of text. The resulting half-English, half-foreign, and totally non sequitur response bears almost no resemblance to the original. Remember the old game of "Telephone"? Something is lost, and sometimes something is gained."

Enjoy!
~~GB



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