Saturday, February 04, 2006

Vivid Description Consummation 

A visitor translated Temporal Island into Chinese today. How cool is that? I translated bits back into English using AltaVista's Babel Fish. Turns out I don't express myself well in Chinese.

The 'Change of Scenery' post is a good example. 'Come chuck seagulls' became 'come [three Chinese characters] meat seagulls.' 'Picture perfect' re-translated as 'vivid description consummation' and 'blogger meet up' is now 'blogger assembly.'

One of the few words not to translate is the Japanese word 'sudoku' but maybe I should have written it as 'su doku.'

Like playing records backwards, it's kinda fun to read otherwise hidden messages into the text, especially when the translation reveals: "Sight Very quickly will come - the comparison not full analogy likely to see in any it with to be evasive the retina." The original read, "Coming soon - more inadequate analogies on what it's like to see with dodgy retinas." Fortune cookies of the future.

The best part is that the translations throw up new expressions. I may never use my thesaurus again.

Comments: Post a Comment

This page is powered by Blogger.