Subj : Languages
To   : Ed Vance
From : Gleb Hlebov
Date : Thu Jan 23 2025 14:37:22

Hi Ed,

Wed 22 Jan 2025 at 23:44, you wrote to All:

 EV> I have been reading some messages in this forum and began to think
 EV> about The Night Show years ago when Jack Parr was the host
 EV> Some nights he would have 4 or 5 people who could use multiple
 EV> languages. Jack would (whisper?) tell a short story ( or joke) to one
 EV> of the guest. Each guest would say the story to another guest but in
 EV> another language. When the story was told to the last member of the
 EV> group they would tell Jack and the audience in English what they heard
 EV> and most times the story was very different than it was first told

Humans are "unreliable narrators", of sorts.
You would expect the same "faulty phone line" effect if you decided to feed it into an online translator, like Google, some 15-20 years ago. However, today's Google translation algorithms are so advanced and precise it's scary. :-)

======
- Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
- By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
- Methinks it is like a weasel.
- It is backed like a weasel.
- Or like a whale?
- Very like a whale.

GT translation chain: English - Russian - Italian - German - Turkish - Polish - English, and here's the result:

- Do you see that the cloud is almost a camel?
- For fair and really like a camel.
- Metts is like love.
- He is supported as love.
- Is it like a whale?
- Like a whale.
======

I can see how "weasel" turned into "love" at some point because of the ambiguous Russian translation of the word, but all in all, really good job!


.... Error #030: SysOp is out of beer
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 * Origin: Microstuff, Inc. (2:5023/24.4222)

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