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
