talkmagic.co.uk

I've just rediscovered the fun little website Lost in Translation. Feed it any snippet of English and it will drag the words through Babelfish ten times. (Or a few more, if you tick the box to include Asian languages.)

I've been giving it sentences from Talk Magic -- since they're often obscure enough in English to start with -- and enjoying the fun. My favourite so far is:

Original: "Humans have a highly evolved ability to detect gaze direction, even momentary glances."

Result: "In order to be of the human being it must discover a capacity, of which it is to finish the development, in the order the direction locally determined of a volatile one considered, also provisory volatile composed sight them."

Top that!

"I made to condemn the magician of the given maintenance, him frequently in a little English dark that will be begun here and to consider the restoration."

was originally your sentence - "I've been giving it sentences from Talk Magic -- since they're often obscure enough in English to start with -- and enjoying the fun."

"Please don't ask how tricks are done, it means we're being asked to be giving away other people's secrets which are not ours to divulge."

Becomes: "Request not to be wanted knowledge since I made languages, I mean that they load those secrecies to us of the other people who far give that with which we discover we are not."

Original English Text:
"I'd love to shake your hand" he said, "but I've heard things..."

Translated:
" It would want to shake it hand" he said, " but he felt " of the things… ;

Original English Text:
Making other Magicians disappear since 1982

Translated:
Manufacture of the other Magier, scompaia of 1982

And my personal favourite:
You knew that they recommend a receiver of paper and him of the thing to her that you would have that to do to him not immediately, in the morning, who one, of you use of imbroglione, use.

Which came from the original english:
Well, one thing you could, and I recomend you should do, is that when using gimmicks, dont use them right away.

EDIT: I may be playing with this all day

Death is Death, live with it. Goes to:
They fill to the inoperative women, this inoperative man envelope and, yes

The foot the left was placed, the foot the left, approximately it shakes that entirely. In order it does Hokey Kokey, faces and to be repaired, is that concerning those which are completely.

Left placement's foot, the foot is left, it vibrates that completely approximately. It executes Hokey Kokey according to the sequence, the surface, and will be repaired, is that about completely is these.

The foot of the left disposal, the foot is left completely approached, vibrated this. It executes Kokey with water of Roses in according to instruction, the surface and will be repaired, is, that she is aproximadamente completely those.

We Will Rock You:

The boy of the colleague, than it has, is the great team of employees loses as the plant, than they sang the great uproars, the hour of the concrete of the surface of the material date, the end to receive the considerable food of shamed of the case, than he begins it, the end to arrive, he That talks about ours that ours had vibrated, the end to vibrate us in ours

Famous Movie Tag-Lines

Alien
In the station of the work nobody can feel the end to shout he to him

Jaws 2
At the moment like you thought, correct to give return in the water

Star Wars
The time does far in a galaxy, far

The X-Files
It is of the truth has

Superman
In order to think where the man can pilot

Ghostbusters
For in sequence that flame to whom the energy of already?

Well it mangles Will!

too much or ingualmente that is of being it is not the question if tis more noble of the alcohol to the aid and to you shoot with an arrow inside within the suffering of the fortunes he are rent-to produce victim or the opposition who will finish.

From the penultimate lines of HP Lovecraft's The Statement of Randolph Carter:

I heard it, and knew no more--heard it as I sat petrified in that unknown cemetery in the hollow, amidst the crumbling stones and the falling tombs, the rank vegetation and the miasmal vapors-- heard it well up from the innermost depths of that damnable open sepulcher as I watched amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance beneath an accursed waning moon.

becomes...

I have the felt and nient'altro did not know--disowned of the petrificato of the fact in socket belongs, as far as the Kirchhof, under that one rocks of émiettage that is company and the graves if, in lux URI eyes the vegetation and those steam miasmal-- condemnable opened of the Sepulcher it is of which it is of the leaves of operation (schedule) to the aerosol to the end the depths the majority of the secret of this, when I to observe the informal dance of the shades and necrófago under the cursed moon of the reduction.





The opening stanza of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

becomes...

A time in weaker return the midnight, when I consider weak and I obtain tired, in very it came the data that carriering, that is the forgotten knowledge disowned and peculiar, when folding the title, a manufacture of the hair almost, valve, in the date somebody is burned suddenly easy close and here impressive by portone of the mine of the space. ` “Tis a right of the main computer,” chte is, “, writing with portone of the mine of the space - only this one and you are pleasant more.”




The first three lines of Sisson's translation (Oxford World Classics) of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy:

Halfway along the road we have to go,
I found myself obscured in a great forest,
Bewildered, and I knew I had lost the way

becomes....

In center the way, of that we must follow, we got ourselves to be melancholic in a great forest and are worried and knew that I who estêve moved




And finally...

Schwarznegger's famous line from Terminator 2:

Hasta la vista baby

becomes...

Boy of sight of the auction


This will keep me amused for hours!

I put in some At The Drive-In lyrics... the translations made more sense than the originals...

Half way down the stairs is the stair where I sit.
There isn't any other stair quite like it.
It's not at the bottom.
It's not at the top.
But this is the stair where I always stop.

Becomes:

Half of the method in the soffit of the scale is the scale, where I feel downwards. It has totally on another scale then is not with the soffit. It is not with the end. But it is the scale, where I always stop to me.

Or there's this one:

Womanizer
Woman-Womanizer
You're a womanizer
Oh Womanizer
Oh You're a Womanizer Baby
You, You You Are
You, You You Are
Womanizer, Womanizer, Womanizer

Becomes:
Come winter, with thine angry howl,
And raging, bend the naked tree;
Thy gloom will soothe my cheerless soul,
When nature all is sad like me!
And maun I still on Menie doat,
And bear the scorn that's in her e'e?
For it's jet, jet black, an' it's like a hawk,
An' it winna let a body be.

Go figure!

pcwells wrote:Womanizer
Woman-Womanizer
You're a womanizer
Oh Womanizer
Oh You're a Womanizer Baby
You, You You Are
You, You You Are
Womanizer, Womanizer, Womanizer

Becomes:
Come winter, with thine angry howl,
And raging, bend the naked tree;
Thy gloom will soothe my cheerless soul,
When nature all is sad like me!
And maun I still on Menie doat,
And bear the scorn that's in her e'e?
For it's jet, jet black, an' it's like a hawk,
An' it winna let a body be.

Go figure!

Disturbingly better than the original!

Original:
"Eternity and the company of Beelzebub with all his hellish instruments of death seem like a picknick compared to five minutes with me and this pencil."

After 10x Babelfish:
"The eternity and the society of the Beelzebub with all terrible instruments of the inoperative women seem like picknick, this compares with five minutes with me and this pencil."

... looks surprisingly similar, except that "death" has been replaced with "INOPERATIVE WOMEN"... well, I guess that's kind of the same, too