I’ve got a widget on my Mac that translates English into a few other languages, and vice-versa. As I’m not a linguist I thought this could come in handy sometime so I tried a few lines just to see what would happen. I typed in this:
“She was the most beautiful girl I had ever laid eyes on.”
Which, in French, became this:
“Elle était la fille la plus belle que j'avais jamais étendu des yeux en fonction.”
Having no idea how successful this was—the copyright symbol in the middle of two words gave me pause--I decided to re-translate the phrase back into English. Here’s what I got:
“It était the most beautiful girl whom I never had étendu of the eyes in function.”
Something had gone terribly wrong somewhere—maybe it was just me. I decided to try German and typed in the following:
“She had fire in her eyes as she approached--I was her slave!”
It translated like this:
“Sie hatte Feuer in ihren Augen, während sie sich näherte--Ich war ihr Sklave!”
I didn’t see any copyright symbols so I figured I was on to something so I re-translated back into English and got this:
“It had fires in its eyes, während it näherte itself--I was their slave!”
I was getting angry by now. Maybe I could take out the nonsense words and try it again. I decided to do that--take it into Chinese and then back to English—here’s what I got:
“It had of Feur in a H.”
I was losing faith in the widget’s abilities, but I kind of liked what I was getting. These Chinese cats must be onto something. I poked this in:
“Her dark eyes were like daggers that saw through me--if looks could kill, I was a dead man.”
This was beyond the widget’s range—it just said UNDEFINED, so I moved on. I ran the sentence through German, into Italian, and then back to English:
“Their dark eyes were like Dolche, that it has seen from me--if the sights could finish, I was a dead man.”
Finally! Results I can live with! This was encouraging—the winning path was: English-German-Italian-English. I was in business! I decided to run the words from the cartoon (above) through my new system—I had to clean up a few spots but here’s what I got:
“He--Do they think that it is simple, good this one looking at? It is not. I have to strike far at the infant with schticken!”
“I am the subject of nine schticken for one month! I live in the forest the good thing always!”
Even with the clean-up the results are uneven, I think, but I can’t say it’s all bad. Unfortunately, the widget can’t handle large chunks of words all at once, so translating whole books would be too cumbersome to attempt. Perhaps a younger man will pick up where I’ve left off.
“Schaptzein myself is large Bingle-schtick!”
© 2010 Tom Roy
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