Among things that shouldn't still be funny to me, but are: crazy English on signs, crazy English on menus, and the crazy English that you get when you use babelfish.yahoo.com to translate a Chinese website into English.
I've actually become adept at translating crazy English into English, as when I recently ate at a restaurant offering "sub-cow fights the mountain vegetation." I knew this meant veal and mountain vegetables, and I was so happy to read an English menu (instead of saying, um, this is some kind of chicken and rice, this is some kind of pork and noodles...).
And Babelfish is actually really helpful to translate a whole website- once you learn how to read the translations. But I just found a page for an 11-K race I'd like to run but it was just a text document you opened, so I thought I'd try pasting in the Chinese text and see what it came up with. I've pasted it below, because it sounds like some really avant-garde poem, no?
2008 sell chops 憭 pulls die 頝 擉 頝 鈭 the grapes 11K 頝 navigation 鞈 to bestow Kui 鞈 to bestow the flight of steps leading to a palace hall 蝡 € € 銝 € € 瘣 stuffed dumpling 銝 cake to chop 銋 a batch of 颲 insect to lie turns the obvious 箇 蝡 crop fish to hatch 嚗 甇 the date 蝡 crop fish zheng to fold 甈 ∟ 颲 the insect qian to wither struggles obvious 嚗 struggles 憭 憭 璅 mu 靘 the pile widowed € 鈭 箇 to engrave 芣 鞈 virtuous sighs twists 嚗 € 隞 the junction to turn obvious 憭 鈭 箇 鈭 zheng 嚗 blood 颲 11KM 頝
Friday, July 11, 2008
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