All Tongue And Groove
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday November 14, 1998
With linguistic gymnastics, the meaning is found in the translation.
I DON'T know about you, but I'm constantly on the lookout for cheap entertainment from the Web. And I was hoping for a little distraction last week when an e-mail arrived from Mr Cammo, an old college friend.
"Aloha Jon, an even fast word for saying hello and reminding it that there are lives beyond the large dividing distance," the message began unconvincingly, drawing me to wonder if perhaps it was another of those substance-enhanced missives you occasionally get from friends when they have a few too many and start reminiscing about the good, bad and ugly old days.
"Drunk and horrible lifespan of the O.K.S," it continued, standing unsteadily on its feet, "therefore is it frequently ... however we is creatures of all God. Hope that everything probably is there in this Sydneyplatz. Everything is finely here in sunny Bathurst, in which the beer on the vine matures."
Now, I have often wondered if this particular friend was not a cow or two short of the full brain herd (and he, to be fair, must surely have wondered the same of me).
This uncertainty was firming into something solid until the next paragraph of his letter offered an explanation: "If this message seems a little psychotisches, is even, because I it into German and then back into English with the AltaVista translation service http://babelfish.altavista.com."
To convince me, he'd CCed his real message below: "Aloha Jon, Just a quick word to say hello and to remind you that there is life beyond the Great Dividing Range. Okay, so it's often a hairy, drunk and obnoxious life ... but we're all God's creatures. Hope all is well over there in that Sydney place. All is fine here in sunny Bathurst, where the beer is ripening on the vine."
The AltaVista Translator. What a brilliant site! What endless possibilities! I felt all my plans for the rest of the day dissolve, knowing I would be spending the afternoon playing with this new toy, this Linguistic Surrealism Generator.
First stop: the horror of Paul McCartney.
Yesterday all seemed my troubles it look up to now away Now, as if they are here, to remain Oh I believe inside yesterday Suddenly, I are not half man, which I maintained,
There to be been are a shadow, which hangs Oh over me, came yesterday suddenly
Bloody hell, I thought, that's an improvement. I realised that if I had any sense of obligation to the community, I would dedicate myself to similarly improving his entire catalogue. But I don't. And it sounded like hard work - I have a doctor's note about that.
Instead, I sat back in my chair and let my mind drift across the romance of the idea. If a lifeless, cheesy McCartney ballad could become so interesting, what else could be rescued? Could a Baywatch script make High Art? Could Patrick White be rendered readable? Could the Bible ... no, best not to go down that track.
How bad, I wondered, would something have to be before the German-reverse-translation process didn't make it funnier?
All Australians, leave, us, rejoice
For are young and free us.
We have golden soil and abundance for Toil.
Our house is geumguertet by sea.
Our country has abundance at the gifts of the nature
Of the beauty richly and rarely.
In history page left each fair stage
Progress Australia.
In joyful the loads you let
Voraustralienmesse sing us then
Wow. It was clear I was going to have to go much further out. I tried to mess with the translator's mind by feeding in verses of Lewis Carroll's gibberish Jabberwocky poem, but it threw them back pretty much intact.
While I was pondering a next step, another
e-mail arrived from over the mountains. My friend had typed in Pauline Hanson's maiden speech. And I'll be damned if it didn't make more sense after the journey.
"Mr Acting Speaker, if I mean first speech in this workstation form, I congratulate you on your selection and would like to say, how proud here I should be as the independent component for Oxley. I do not come as polished politicians however as a woman, who had its appropriate proportion that life knocking.
"My opinion over outputs is based on commonsense and my experience as a nut/mother of four children, how exclusive source material and as a geschaeftsfrau, who lets a fish and a chip system run. I won the seat of Oxley largely on an output, which resulted in me designating a racingists."
I've always been a lover of Japglish, the poor translations you find on Asian toys and clothing. Here is the Web letting us all DIY. Thanks to AltaVista Translations, my browser now speaks several languages and has a bad accent in all of them. Because not only does it play the German trick, it can also mangle your words in French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Just type in some text or a URL.
For the sake of comparison, I decided to test all of the languages, choosing the kind of innocent, everyday sentence you're likely to need while holidaying in foreign climes: "The Great Pyramid isn't much chop - as tourist attractions go, I reckon the Big Banana is a far more crucial experience."
German: "The large pyramid is not much blow - there routistic attraction go, count I the large banana am far more deciding an experience."
French: "The large pyramid is not much of blow of axe - because attractions of tourists disappear, I count large banana is much more crucial one experiment."
Italian: "The great pyramid is not much cut - poiche the tourist attractions go, estimate the large banana are a much more crucial experience."
Portuguese: "The great pyramid is not very chop - because the attractions tourist go, I count the great banana I am distant more crucial an experience."
Spanish: "The great pyramid is not much slice - because the tourist attractions go, story the great banana I am far more crucial a experience."
If this is the best computers can do, let's hope they never get to run the United
Nations. Then again ... oh, oh, sorry, I have
to go. My house is being geumguertet by the sea again.
casimir@smh.com.au
© 1998 Sydney Morning Herald