

Show HN: What happens when you translate phrases too many times? - nicklovescode
http://nickcammarata.com/translatortron/

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zalew
Fun and interesting project. Reminds me of <http://www.translationparty.com/>

You should totally enable linking to the language setups, now it's hard to
share an interesting result.

~~~
dkarl
My friends and I had a lot of fun with translationparty.com, and I heartily
second the creation of links so people can share. Shakespeare is always fun.
Can anyone guess what these two are?

 _The death of hell for all of us dog, the dog's eyes in front of him, with
his teeth, worrying lambs and noble lineage, and the masterpiece of God, a
tyrant on the planet Defacer well fail, this is usually called the soul exists
in the eyes, bruises, your uterus relax, to pursue our grave._

 _But I have to by law, larger than this year, the President, a child, but no
more expensive orders my mind: What is worse, actually came to this world was
sent, but his mother was right: when there a very good exercise, and a son of
a bitch, must be recognized_

It does better with shorter sentences:

 _Come on, you in me unsex human spirit, I filled with senior officials of the
terrible cruelty of the full ah! Make my blood thick, blocking the access
channel and remorse, and that nature, I do not blame the purpose visitings
down, the effect is no peace between, for me! Come to my woman's breasts, and
take the courage of my milk, the ministers murder_

This one came out impressively accurate:

 _This is a dagger before me, the handle toward my hand?_

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healthyhippo
In high school US history, there was a daily homework assignment where we had
to turn in a 1 page paper on some historical topic (for example, the battle of
antietam in the civil war). Teacher never really read the homework- just
scanned it for some keywords and made sure no one was copying off of anyone
else.

I made a deal with the girl that sat next to me that we would do each others
homework on alternating weeks. On her weeks, she'd write two different
versions of something similar, paraphrased from the textbook.

On my weeks, I'd copy /paste some blurb from online for her version. Then I'd
take that blurb, and run it through babelfish a couple times for mine. Worked
great.

One time I got sloppy, and didn't even run mine through the translator. I just
handed in identical things in different fonts. She got a check +, and i got a
check. I can't describe how furious I was.

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zachallaun
This is quite entertaining.

In the same vein:

"What Happens to a YouTube Video Uploaded 1,000 Times"
([http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/04/youtube-video-
uploa...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/04/youtube-video-
uploaded-10_n_601066.html))

~~~
mwilcox
That's also a modern tribute to the original "I Am Sitting in a Room" by Alvin
Lucier - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfssj80oNuM> Wikipedia article here:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Sitting_in_a_Room>

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nhebb
If you try if with just the European languages, the translation actually comes
through pretty well. Adding Persian or one of the Asian languages is where
things get messed up.

Which means... if you want to expand your market, you could probably provide
sufficient support to European countries using Google translate to communicate
with customers.

~~~
tibbon
If i'm remembering right, that's largely because proceedings from EU and
european courts are used as the data for many of these translators, since
there is such a copious amount of text that is well translated between the
languages and recorded.

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spiralganglion
I highly recommend taking some poetry through this process. I also highly
recommend taking the translation back to English after each other language, so
you can watch how each translation changes it.

However, this is one case where Google's improvement of their algorithms make
the outcome _less_ interesting. I've watched it happen.

I record music as a hobby. In the past 6 years, I've recorded 24 albums in 24
different genres — many film and theatre scores, and "experimental" (groan-
worthy term) electroacoustic music. When I'm not quite satisfied with lyrics
that I've written, and instead want a can't-quite-put-my-finger-on-it weird
mood, I use this exact technique. It translates what I've written into more
_idiosyncratic_ forms. There are chains of languages of which I'm most fond,
particularly to/from Japanese (seems to be the weirdest of all the asian
language translations — gives a lot of weird articles).

~~~
drivebyacct2
> I also highly recommend taking the translation back to English after each
> other language, so you can watch how each translation changes it.

That observation will change the translation though... Unless you went:

A -> Spanish(A) -> English(Spanish(A)) -> German(Spanish(A)) ->
English(German(Spanish(A))).

Otherwise you'd be doing:

A -> Spanish(A) -> English(Spanish(A)) -> German(English(Spanish(A))) ->
English(German(English(Spanish(A)))), etc.

~~~
spiralganglion
You're absolutely right.

It's a lot easier (nay, _possible_ ) to do it with the actual Google Translate
website, which is where I do all my chained translations. It may seem like
extra work, but it lets you get a sense of the qualities of each translation.

Obviously, haha, I've spent more time doing this than most would bother to.

------
epochwolf
Well, I stumbled across a recording while I was cleaning him. He says that he
belongs to someone named Obi-Wan Kenobi. I thought he might have meant old
Ben. Do you know what he's talking about?

German -> Persian -> German -> Japanese -> Polish -> English -> Korean ->
Chinese -> Italian -> Korean -> Spanish -> Polish -> Chinese -> Japanese

Oh, the game is pretty amazing. I have heard people kenobiraneun Obi. This
point, I think this is old. You know?

\--

I'm tempted to run some a Terms of Service through the translator a few times
and see if anyone notices.

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rosser
This is very similar to a minor plot-point in PK Dick's "The Galactic Pot-
Healer." The protagonist is a typical Dick character, out of place in his
world. His pastime is to use the language translation feature of the global
computer system (which is appreciably less than perfect) to translate, and re-
translate famous sayings and the like enough times to obscure the original,
and then submit the mutated phrases to his friends, to see if they can guess
the original.

------
dkarl
It has started getting stuck on translations _from_ (but not to) Chinese,
Japanese, and Korean, even though the translations execute quickly when I do
them in Google Translate. It happens in Chrome and Firefox. I was able to use
it for several minutes before this started happening.

~~~
nicklovescode
I made a small edit, but I reverted it. Is it fixed now?

~~~
dkarl
Nope. Here's some Japanese it got stuck on:

_しかし、陽気なトリックの形ではない私は、また好色そうなガラスを裁判所に請求する。ぶし刻印していますが、、、愛の威厳はニンフをアンブリング悪意に満ちた前に誇示したい、私は、この公平な割合の縮小午前、自然を装うことで機能の浮気、変形は、未完の、私の時間に、この呼吸の世界の前に送ら乏しく、半分はまた、交流したので、弱々しくと時代遅れその犬は私に樹皮私はそれらが停止になることは、なぜ、私は、この弱い配管平和の時間がない喜びは、太陽とデスカントわたし自身の変形に私の影をスパイする場合を除き、時間を離れて渡す必要があります：私は、恋人を証明することはできないため、これらの公正よく話された日を楽しませるには、それゆえに、私は決心している悪役を証明するためにそして、これらの日のアイドル快楽を利用しています_

And some Korean:

 _하지만 미러 사랑, 나 난폭하게 찍혀 법원에 운동이나 트릭에 대한 형상에 있지 않은 내가, 그리고 당신이 당신의 폐하는 공정한 비율을
감소 무자 비한 ambling 요정 내가 전에 잘난 체하면서 사랑하는 함수를 속여서 이 세상의 호흡, 내 도착하기 전에 보낸 기형 자연,
끝나지 않은, 감추기 위해서 어디에 가난한 절반, 그리고하고 약한 밖으로 패션의 날 내가 그들을 위해 내가 그 때문에 튜브를 중지 짖는 개
나 사랑하는이 박람회의 일을 알고 증명할 수 없기 때문에, 그리고 따라서 : 평화의 짧은 시간은 태양에 내 그림자를 감시하라는 게 아니었과
내 자신의 기형에 넣어 지출 시간의 즐거움을 가지고 있지 , 그래서 제가 악역을 증명하기 위해 오전과 당시의 유휴 기쁨을 미워, 잘
구사합니다._

Here's some Persian, too:

اما من ، که هستم برای ورزش کلاهبرداری متناسب نیست ، آیا دادگاه عشق آینه ، من
که هستم rudely مهر ، و می خواهند عظمت عشق را به قبل از گستاخ پوره ambling من
قدم زنی با تبختر ، که هستم این نسبت عادلانه ، فریب خوردن از ویژگی های
dissembling طبیعت کاهش می یابد ، تغییر شکل ، ناتمام ، فرستاده قبل از زمان من
رو وارد این دنیا تنفس ، به سختی نیم شکل گرفته ، و این که تا ناشیانه و
unfashionable که پوست سگ به من که من متر &#39; متوقف شده توسط آنها ، چرا من ،
در این زمان ضعیف لوله صلح ، هیچ لذتی را هم به تصویب ، مگر آن که به جاسوسی در
سایه ام خورشید و نظرات را در تغییر شکل خود من : و بنابراین ، از آنجایی که من
می تواند ثابت کند عاشق به عادلانه می دانم این روزها صحبت خوب ، من مصمم هستم تا
ثابت تبه کار و نفرت را با لذت از این روزها از استراحت نیست.

It's related to length. This Japanese selection worked fine:

_あなたが必要がありますあなたのドリンクやあなたの売春婦を残すと、ドアの維持などを、、あなたショーウェスト以上を持ってあなたは知っておら未満を話す、なたowestはなく、ライドに行くのだより、より多くのあなたは、Setあなたthrowest未満trowest未満貸しポイントつ以上の多数。_

As did this Chinese one:

_比你不容多，说话比你知道不，借不到，你把所欠的，乘坐更比你走到哪里去，更比你trowest，设置比你throwest少;给你喝，你的妓女，并保持在室内，你就会有更多的两年多的几十点。_

P.S. Gone to bed. Thanks for the amusement! I'm sure I'll check back tomorrow.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Clearly a currently "viral" (oh how I hate that over-use, much abused term)
concept/idea:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2213898>

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jayzee
"I love you" does not lose meaning in translation.

~~~
chc
Many simple, common SVO sentences ("I love you," "he ate a hamburger," "she
killed her husband") along those lines will be translated with high fidelity.
Those are the easiest case.

~~~
jayzee
I got that. I was aiming for a little poetry by pointing that specific one
out.

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notthetup
Ahhh.. Reminds me of the Starwars subtitles translated back from Chinese into
English..

