Friday, November 16, 2007

Multibabel

Lost in Translation is a fun little tool, held together with a Perl script and powered by Altavista's Babelfish translator. It takes the text you enter and translates it through several languages before returning it to English.

It's described on the site as the game of Telephone, but I think it's a lot more like Engrish. The one big fault is that sometimes a word will be translated which is not easily translated back, so you will end up with foreign language artifacts in your final English text.

Some examples:

  • I think we're alone now, there doesn't seem to be anyone around. translates to Nontask that we are only hour, I look like here, all same that one to be around.

  • She's buying a stairway to heaven. translates to Stairs of purchase one with the sky.

  • You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. translates to They can control, when it appreciates, but you cannot never go.

Link to Lost in Translation
Link to Babelfish