Lost in Google Translation: an Introduction

This is an old game I used to play back in the days of BabelFish: testing its automated language translation services by putting a bit of text through a variety of languages and looking at the end result, which had invariably been chewed up beyond recognition. The results often had a mysterious poetry to them, in fact, but were clearly nonsense.

Google's translation service is, I must admit, light years ahead. So much so, in fact, that a single test of translating text from English into Language X and then back again would result in text 95% identical to the original. So no good, then. Instead, I subject texts to a translation through five languages before reconverting it to English. The results are, well, much more abstract.

Each entry in this blog is a verse from a popular song (with slight modifications to grammar and punctuation to make complete sentences) translated through five different languages before being reconverted to English. Your job is merely to look at the results and see if you can't guess which song you're currently viewing, lost in Google Translation.

As an example, then, here are the first three paragraphs of this entry after being translated from English to Maltese, then to Korean, then to Hindi, then to Romanian, then to Turkish and then back to our friend English. Well, let's put that "English" in quotation marks...

Back in an era Babelfish, here to play an old game: language, some tests and various identification except for chew hoeja test results are used by the end of the report that the automatic language translation services. As a result, often a mystery, poetry, actually, but I was talking.

Google's translation service, Rhee JE, dois 1000000000000 years to recognize. So, in fact, following a return result, X and 95% of the original English text for translation and a text. A good thing. Rather, the first five languages, English and translation followed by reconverting the text. The result a much more abstract.

This blog, grammar and punctuation a song and poetry, with each element), and translated into five languages, and all the English sentences (in some changes are reconverted ago. DVS. Işleri results Google now reports whether or not to see the translation, you judge an easy song Look lost.