Raw Babelized

Take the first stanza to my poem “Raw,” and put it into Altavista’s Bablefish translation service, translate it to a foreign language and back to English again, and the results are pure beatnik heaven. Continuing to send that translation back and forth until it stabilizes is referred to as Babelizing. Confused? Check out these examples.

First, the stanza as originally written by me:

Slipshod and raw pink faces in the early light It’s murder out here on wet pavement and blood runs through the grooves in the cobble-stone beat signs pointing to better destinations

And Babelizing it with Spanish we get:

Neglecting expensive and heavy petroleum the pink ones in the early light are murder outwards here in the wet pavement and the operations of the blood through the furrows in cobble-stone beat the samples that they indicate to better destinations

Not bad. Really kind of groovy. Odd about the “heavy petroleum,” but I can dig it. Now it gets weirder in German:

Slipshod and raw rosafarbene faces in the early light are it murder on wet Plasterung and blood box by the slots into Kopfstein run are left, which is fastened here by the announcements, which point to better Bestimmungsoerter

“Rosafarbene”? Is that German for “pink”? “Blood box by the slots into Kopfstein run are left,” is actually a better line altogether than the one I wrote. That may stay.

The Chinese version is disappointingly unremarkable:

Slipshod and has not completed the pink face is this runs in wet road surface murder here beats the symbol in the early light and the blood through the groove to aim at a better destination in the cobblestone

I’ve seen funnier mistranslations on chopstick wrappers. The Japanese, however, is wildly off kilter. It’s practically a story in of itself, and kept on translating until the software I was using timed out. Here is it’s eighteenth iteration:

Depending upon you who attach the important point which is struck because that it adds in regard to the that semantic of the thing where light/write of current events of the thing which becomes range point fact of feeling becomes and point surface it becomes, it becomes the profit and the fact which obtains the pass which it is possible, it is, that it is good, but it is, it is fast, it became, the point feeling the place and is that, becomes the feeling which was processed here in regard to the point and the range which become the pavement of operation of the Slipshod sign regarding the pink of murder of the boulder of the blood of the groove of the point which becomes, as for the fact which has gotten wet addition destination of thing it becomes to in regard and becomes to the very It is obtained, that it becomes, that becomes possible,

One can see how that is the language of the Haiku. I like how the first line of my poem doesn’t appear until the last third of this translation.

Korean, too, apparently is a language of subtleties that Bablefish has yet to master:

Inside murdering it of here indication the pink color color color face which it aims on the destination internal which recovers inside the light which arrives to the pavement internal which it gets and inside groove it runs the IgJi which inside the inside target which compares and the blood which the map hits the target the gravel is impure to it in the grade milk place

And apparently, Korean dairies are known for their very clean rocks.

Finally, we look at Italian, which highlights another disaster awaiting anyone foolish enough to Babelize their poems. Sometimes Bablefish will begin to repeat words or phrases within the translation, preventing a decent Babelization, since the translation always sends back something different each iteration. This is the fourteenth iteration in Italian. See if you can find the phrase that apparently doubles itself each time it goes back and forth from Italian to English:

The faces for king-enter slipshod and that crude one to the homicide of the payment of the payment of the payment of the payment of the payment of the payment of the payment of the payment of the payment of the payment of the payment of the payment of the payment of the light in advance payment is on the paving of the external part has been bathed here and the operations of the spirit through rabbets in the cobble-stone hit the signs that they indicate to the better destinations

If you use a Mac, by the way, a quicker way to Babelize something is with Babelizer by Jonathan Feinberg.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:05 AM, 30 August 2005 | Comments (0)

Friday Cat Blogging: Natural Light

I like photographing Jinx in natural light, because the flash tends to make her squint, making it difficult to see her amazing green eyes that constantly glow. It’s tough to catch her in the proper lighting though, because she doesn’t like sunlight, and her face is pitch black. Sometimes I have to blow out the levels in Photoshop just to make out any depth in her face. This photo wasn’t too bad, though.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:02 PM, 26 August 2005 | Comments (0)

Bumper Angels

Bob Cesca, on the Huffington Post, asks why more traffic accidents don’t happen. The obvious answer: Bumper angels.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:32 PM, 25 August 2005 | Comments (0)

Friday Cat Blogging: Jinx in the box

A little late for Friday, but it’s my first one, so deal.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:46 AM, 13 August 2005 | Comments (1)

James Dobson thinks I am gay

Over at the Huffington Post, Gene Stone writes about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts and his possible connection to those horrible gay people. It seems that Roberts did some pro bono work on a gay rights case in Colorado, and now some scary right-wing fundies are all twisted in their knickers over this.

Stone continues with ultra-fundie, and super-dolt, James Dobson’s warning signs for parents that their sons might be gay. Let’s take a look at some of these:

1. Your boy has a strong feeling he is “different from other boys.”
2. “A tendency to cry easily, be less athletic, and dislike the roughhousing that other boys enjoy.”
3. “A persistent preference to play female roles in make-believe play.”
4. “A strong preference to spend time in the company of girls and participate in their games and other pastimes.”
5. “A susceptibility to be bullied by other boys, who may tease them unmercifully and call them ‘queer,’ ‘fag’ and ‘gay.’”
6. “A tendency to walk, talk, dress and even ‘think’ effeminately.”
7. “A repeatedly stated desire to be — or insistence that he is — a girl.”

A quick tally gives me at least 5 out of the 7 warning signs that I was going to turn gay/am gay/will one day admit that I am gay. This would bother me, if I believed that, a) there is something wrong with homosexuality, and b) humans are either homosexual or heterosexual and that their is nothing in between, which is a subject for a much more in-depth discussion, but nevermind that for the moment.

Instead, let’s look back at that list. 1) different from other boys. I would think is common to a vast majority of little boys. We’re all taught to be heroes, and since heroes rise above the crowd, we’d have to feel different. I believe Sesame Street would call it Being Special. That’s a ridiculous warning sign for homosexuality, but a perfectly good warning sign for children who are beginning to think independently and will separate themselves from their family unit. I believe this is what causes James Dobson to think individuality is the Devil’s work.

2) crying, less athletic, disliking roughhousing. Shit. That’s me in a nutshell. I broke down every time one of those stupid birds died in March of the Penguins. I am not physically fit, and I hate when my friends start smacking each other in the guise of “practicing ninjitsu.” Honestly, I think obsessing about the body and touching other men indicates a propensity for homosexuality! But not being a man’s man, I wouldn’t really know.

3) playing feminine roles. Sure, I’ve played the sorceress in Diablo II, and a couple of my main characters in my short stories have been female. I kind of think of this as “relating to the opposite sex” or “indulging in fantasy.” I can understand why this would scare the crap out of Dobson.

4) likes spending time with girls and engaging in feminine pastimes. This one cracks me up. Okay, first, is not the definition of a heterosexual man, “a male attracted to females of the same species”? Why would I not like to spend time with girls? As a little boy, the girls were always so much more interesting to me. They smelled better, wore prettier clothes, and tended not to hit me (see #2). Then, too, I took to cooking before I ever took to baseball (I am assuming to a guy like Dobson, cooking is a feminine pastime). This isn’t to say that I didn’t have male friends growing up. In fact, it never made a difference to me as a kid. Kids were kids, and if you were in the same neighborhood as me, you either were my friend or my hated enemy, usually both within the same day. This one is really stupid. Dobson is beginning to confuse homosexuality with being comfortable with feminine roles. I think only 5 year-olds confuse gays with sissies.

5) being bullied. Right. This has nothing to do with the cruel child pecking order. If you are picked on by larger boys, you are gay. Great. I went to school with a kid with an obvious glandular problem. He was my age, but about four times my weight and twice my height. He was also a grade lower than me. I wore glasses, kept to myself, and didn’t engage in roughhousing, so, like Dobson, this kid thought I was gay. Well, maybe not gay, but always a “faggot.” He called me that so often that the bus driver took pity on me and told everyone that a faggot is just a bundle of sticks. Strangely, the teasing didn’t stop. Dobson really does have the logical powers of a pre-teen.

6) walk, talk, and think like a woman. I know a couple of homosexual men, and I think they’d say that they walk, talk, and think like themselves, but if forced to lump themselves in with a gender, they’d say, “men,” homosexual men, of course. Being attracted to men doesn’t make one a woman. This is the dangerous aspect to ignorance. Now some male children may “think” like women, and determine that they actually want to be women. I bet most of them grow out of it. I bet those that do not are so confused by their sexuality that they can’t judge for themselves whether they are hetero- or homosexual. Sexuality and gender is a bit more complicated that most of us want to believe.

7) wanting to be girl. See #6.

And whatever. These ignorant, but supposedly pious people, like James Dobson, can’t even be trusted to interpret the Bible correctly. Why would anyone look to them for advice on determining homosexuality in children?

Posted by Jonathan at 04:27 PM, 10 August 2005 | Comments (0)

The Lexijon: Crackhead

I drive like a maniac. Well, I don’t think I do, but I’ve been told that I do by passengers and the pedestrians that narrowly escape my car’s fender. I think I drive passive-aggressively. I speed, but only to get out of the way of other drivers, because hell is other drivers.

In attempting to get away from other drivers as fast as I can, I curse at anyone incompetent enough to get in my way. Usually this is the moron who decides to ever so slowly slide into the left lane on a three lane parkway. Idiot! But, in the heat of the moment, I usually yell something different, questioning their sexuality, which, of course, has nothing to do with driving ability.

In my normal day-to-day sedentary existence, I couldn’t care less about the ways in which we swing. Anyone can stick anything into anyone as long as all parties involved are happy with it. So I’m making an effort to change the invective that I fling uselessly at the driver in front of me.

Steve, a coworker who sits beside me at work, often calls people “crackhead.” I like this one, because, really, crackheads aren’t a demographic that should be worrying about what people are calling them. Words flung at them are the least of their problems. I have made it my mission to bring “crackhead” into my vernacular.

So if you ever hear, “F-ing crackhead!” whilst driving in the left-hand lane, give a friendly wave with your middle finger. The person you’re flipping off just might be me not questioning your sexuality.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:05 PM, 05 August 2005 | Comments (0)