Babelfish

[Aggie87]

I was playing around with Babelfish earlier, and decided to see how it translates some things. I took this phrase from the Gettysburg Address and converted it back & forth into French, German, and Italian. Babelfish seems to create a whole new language unto itself...

Original Phrase:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal"

Babelfish Version:

Four customers and are approximately seven years our family here, which the members, which, which they dedicate themselves you to the topic are, which is carried for this new unintermitting nation later in one, project in liberty and, which "all same men" arise

[Claude]

Crap in, crap out

Seriously, is there any good online translation service? They are all useless when it comes to translate complete sentences, but those I have tried also had a very limited vocabulary on single words.

I would like something like a real dictionary, which gives several translations of a word if it has more than one meaning.

Here is the result of an English-->French-->German-->English translation for this service:

http://translation2.paralink.com/

"Four scores and seven years ago have brought our fathers forward, on this continent, a new nation which is designed in the freedom and have dedicated in the suggestion, " all men(husbands) (people(persons), people) is immediately created"

[Aggie87]

This is kinda fun. After a few more passes through Babelfish, into Korean, Japanese, Portuguese, and a few others:

"The citizen where the famous customer where is that is correct newly approximately here that factory where in order to respect, his free level of member 7 year from four points unintermitting she finishes accurately in order, wages namely the uniform clay/tone of your increase after that, your and his et cetera " " crowdedly which is always executed the lithium of this family which has these ingualmente which are seen "

[White Lightning]

Crap in, crap out

Seriously, is there any good online translation service? They are all useless when it comes to translate complete sentences, but those I have tried also had a very limited vocabulary on single words.

I would like something like a real dictionary, which gives several translations of a word if it has more than one meaning.

Here is the result of an English-->French-->German-->English translation for this service:

http://translation2.paralink.com/

"Four scores and seven years ago have brought our fathers forward, on this continent, a new nation which is designed in the freedom and have dedicated in the suggestion, " all men(husbands) (people(persons), people) is immediately created"

Claude,

Check out babylon.com Excellent downloadable dictionaries.

[David Ayers]

I love this kind of thing - to me it is literature. Or can be. Like the cut ups of William Burroughs. There are people going in to print with material of this kind - though I can't give you any references right at this moment...

This is a kind of found poetry - of course careful editing is required in presenting it. The choice of a document such as the Gettysburg Address is a good one. The passage can keep its title while all the words are changed.

If you never looked at William Burroughs' The Ticket That Exploded now is the time!

Edited June 16, 2003 by David Ayers