‘Lost in the translation’ is such a cliché that we hardly ever think about the validity of the statement.
I had a light bulb moment today after having played with Bablel Fish trying to send a message in Spanish to Enrico.
This is the original in English that I typed into the box in the Babel Fish Translation site.
I am at home now. I forgot to copy the images into my iBook. Please excuse my stupidity. I will transfer the images from my office tomorrow. I like the password.
Babel Fish spat out the Spanish translation almost instantaneously….
Ahora estoy en el país. Me olvidé de copiar las imágenes en mi iBook. Excuse por favor mi estupidez. Transferiré las imágenes mañana de mi oficina. Tengo gusto de la contraseña.
A simple Cmd+A followed by a Cmd+C and a Cmd+V (select all, copy & paste) got the Spanish text into the email that I sent to Enrico.
I wasn’t too sure if the translation was grammatically correct, but I was sure Enrico would get the gist.
Curious to see what would result, I tried a reverse Spanish-to-English translation of the message.
This is what I got…
Now I am in the country. I forgot to copy the images in my iBook. Excuse my stupidity please. I will tomorrow transfer the images of my office. I have taste of the password.
Not what I meant at all !!
Curiosity now fully aroused, I explored some more and came upon this excellent site…
This is what the site is about…
What happens when an English phrase is translated (by computer) back and forth between 5 different languages? The authors of the Systran translation software probably never intended this application of their program. As of September 2007, 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. Try it for yourself!
I had to try it. I copied the original English message into the box and hit ‘Babelize.’
This is the result…
Hour I to the house. The panels in iBook of the mine copí are forgotten. Alignment I requests the stupidity of the mine. I transfer the panels, that one that will begin tomorrow of my office. Esteem the word of the movement.
Wow!!
Interesting post, Vijay. Need to be careful as we make new friends in different countries and different cultures, so we don’t unintentionally offend. So happy to have “met” you.
Funny. Perfect recipe for confusion.
When I saw “país” I was indeed confused in the original message, since I didn’t think you crossed international borders to go to/from work.
Of course, the interesting and inevitable logical corollary to your finding is that one should be able to type syntactic jibberish in a given language (keeping a subject and verb, probably should be the same), put it through the Babelfish Blender, and a great work of literature might result! LOL!
Interesting post Vijay. I use a translator often between English and French and between English and Italian. Lucky I know enough of each that I know when it is wrong and I try to say things in a different way. When you get Babel to translate a page it’s hilarious as it’s often a mixture of the original language and the new one. It just seems to give up so often.
Very interesting!