Libertarian Librarian

The Babelfish translator is still around-- though harder to find these days. More remarkably, Alta Vista (remember when Alta Vista was THE search engine? Me neither) is still around. One of the fun things to do with the Babelfish translator was to translate a chunk of text into another language, then take that translation and flip it back into English and see what you get. Like so (from yesterday's David Gilmour entry):

Not surprisingly, then, I was looking forward to the release of On an Island with some hopeful expectations-- especially given that Gilmour recently dashed burgeoning hopes of a Floyd reunion effort by basically saying, "Eh. I'm happy doing what I'm doing-- why would I want to do that?" Last night one of the local radio stations played the whole thing through.

Which, after translating into German and back again, comes out as follows:

Not surprisingly then I looked this Gilmour recently broken sprouting hopes of a Floyd reunification effort forward to the release, by saying generally, particularly given by at an island with somewhat hopeful expectations --, "as. I am lucky, doing, what I do -- why would I want to do that?" Yesterday evening one of the local radio stations played the complete thing to the end.

Actually, that last sentence is very close-- surprisingly so. But the rest is typical. I particularly like "recently broken sprouting hopes." That's actually quite lyrical.

Labels: Writings