From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Subject: Re: [9fans] very OT - Machine translation
From: "Andrew Simmons" <andrew@mbmnz.co.nz>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
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Message-Id: <20020515074009.EXJE19830.mta4-rme.xtra.co.nz@[210.55.150.106]>
Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 19:28:02 +1200
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> Isn't this the long lost conclusion to Alan Sokal's "Transgressing the
> Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"
> that was inadvertently omitted when published in "Social Text"?
>
Fine though Sokal's article was, this is not really fair on the late, great
Quine. Machine translation wreaks havoc on even the clearest writing - as an
experiment, I have run the first verse of one of Australia's most beautiful
folk songs through Babelfish, from English to Italian and then back again.

This is the original:

I was down by Bondi Pier
Drinking tubes of ice-cold beer
With a bucket full of prawns upon my knee
When I'd swallowed the last prawn
I had a technicolour yawn
And I chundered in the old Pacific sea

And here is what Babelfish did to it:

I was down from the drinking tubes of the Bondi Pier of beer ghiacciata with
a full bucket of the gamberetti on mine ginocchio when swallowed the last
one gamberetto that I have had one sbadiglio of the technicolour and
chundered in the old pacific sea.

Mind you, if you take a return journey using Portugese, you get this:

I age for lower for the pipes drinking of Bondi Wharf of the beer I
hoist-cold with a full bucket of the prawns in top of my knee when I engoli
the last prawn that I had a yawn of technicolour and I chundered in the old
pacific sea