Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Make Your Own Engrish Funnies

There is a web app called "translation party," where you enter a phrase or passage in English. It is translated into Japanese. Then back to English. Then back to Japanese, and so on, until equilibrium is reached; that is, when no changes occur during a translation cycle. Here is a passage I posted a while ago:
A very cool picture on EPOD today, taken in Olympic National Park, Washington. That is a lenticular cloud forming as a breeze of very-nearly saturated air rises over a sea stack, cools a tiny amount, leading to condensation and cloud formation. As the air descends again, it warms, and the cloud droplets evaporate. So this would look like a standing wave in a stream; the cloud would appear to be constantly moving, but not going anywhere. Click the pic for bigger, and over to the site for more info.
And here is the "translation:"
Today, Olympic National Park, Washington, EPOD is a very cool photo. Nearby, as well as the very air, not lead to the formation of clouds in the stack trace for the formation of condensation on cooling to increase the saturation of the sea of clouds above the lens is not. Similarly, the air and back down, Attamaru cloud droplets evaporate. Therefore, the standing wave in the stream is a cloud always seems to not go anywhere. Click photo for details and large site.
AHHHHAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAH! This explains Beck. His crew have been running his teleprompter notes through this page!

Followup: I just realized if you take the URL of your results, it saves the original phrase. So you can see the whole progression as the "translation" gets further and further off base. Here's the first paragraph of this post.

Followup 2: Here's another that I tried to keep short and simple (long phrases get cut off, and the program does not like technical language or obscure words) that I have to show Iris.

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