This has been bugging me for a while!
 

Hey all,

I don't make threads and posts often, but this one issue has been irking me for quite some time now. On a previous incarnation of GFF, before all the posts went byebye, there was a thread (I believe it was in the sewers, although I'm not sure) about a horrifically broken translator - it manages to artfully mangle english-to-english translations.

I've googled for it, but to no avail! If anyone here remembers the link, that would be awesome. It's really fun to play around with.

http://world.altavista.com/

English to another language, then that language back to English again.

Additional Spam:
whoa, actually Babelfish seems to have improved since the last time I used it to fuck around (two years ago). Sorry. :(

Well, I just translated "how are you" to Italian, which came out to be "come siete" which translated again means "as you are".

Niiiiiiiiice.

Actually, I think that thread still exists.

The translator was Intertran.

Oh, my god. You're awesome! :D

I thought that the thread was done, finished, vanished without a trace.. I searched for it to no avail.

Thanks a lot! <3 (that's a strictly platonic heart)

Damn, I forgot how much fun that thing is.

Putting in "I do not understand English, will you help me?" gave me:
"IMMATERIALITY be in a state be unintelligible english , prithee utility immateriality?"

Any online translator is going to be reasonably pants by and large. The only thing you can really use them for is getting a general idea of the meaning of something. They're definitely not recommended for actual translations.

But yeah, they're good fun for translating and then back to see what garbled nonsense you get out. Radio 1 (in the UK) used to do a quiz where they translated song titles into some random language and then back again and you had to guess what the original was.

Song lyrics are always good for a giggle.

Becomes:

...wow, those are some crappy lyrics.

I got silly....

Star Trek
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Star Trek: The Next Generation
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Star Trek: Voyager
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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
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Star Trek: Enterprise
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Star Trek: The Motion Picture
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Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn
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Star Trek: The Search for Spock
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