Text Technologies » Babelfish game http://www.texttechnologies.com Understanding technology ... in both senses of the phrase Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:02:59 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.3 Babelfish phrase game — Round 1 http://www.texttechnologies.com/2008/01/06/babelfish-quote-game-1/ http://www.texttechnologies.com/2008/01/06/babelfish-quote-game-1/#comments Sun, 06 Jan 2008 13:24:30 +0000 Curt Monash http://www.texttechnologies.com/2008/01/06/babelfish-quote-game-1/ Babelfish is a machine-translation service offered at a few websites, like these at Yahoo and Yahoo property Altavista. These translations can be somewhat amusing. Indeed, they can be source of a guessing game. A well-known English phrase — say a quote, or idiom, or song lyric — is translated into a foreign language and back a few times. The result is presented, and the challenge is to guess the original.

I’ll start with five; please feel free to post your answers in the comment thread. You can check them before posting, at the second link above. :)

  1. Attach me and me become to the bottom more effective than you can to indeed present you (English –> German –> French –> English)
  2. A law was returned to the moon loine makes here (English –> Italian –> French –> English)
  3. It is not for the sake of, ask those which your country can ask those which can make because of your country and do (English –> Japanese –> English)
  4. Whose of wood these will be me think 4 he knows (English –> Russian –> English)
  5. Sincerely I do not give my expensive, with swore (English –> German –> French –> English)
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