Anyone who has ever used Google’s automated translation service knows that it’s not exactly perfect — generally you’ll wind up with words that are close approximations of what you started with, but Google inevitably decides to change the meaning of at least a few sentences, just for kicks. Today, there’s a new site that taps into Google Translate’s under-appreciated creativity and magnifies it to the point of greatness : Translation Party!.
The site is incredibly simple: you enter any English phrase you can think of, and it uses Google’s automated translator to convert it into Japanese. And then it translates it back into English. And back into Japanese. At each step along the way, the words you began with gradually take shape to form something entirely different and (hopefully) awesome. The retranslations continue until you reach what the site calls ‘equilibrium’, when the English and Japanese words translate back and forth into exactly the same thing. Fortunately, it usually takes at least a few steps for your words to reach equilibrium, and the resulting sentences are often hilarious.
There really isn’t much else to do on the site, but it’s definitely a great way to kill some time. Movie quotes and song lyrics seems to work best. You can also check out a list of some of the results other people are generating by clicking the “crash other parties” at the bottom of the page.
Enjoy it. And October 5 power, to please.
http://translat....com/tp/#461145
Hahah, what do I win?
Never doubt Google! Seriously, that’s awesome.
That should replace the screenshot in the post! He SO wins.
tap in ‘really really shit’ to achieve perfection
http://translat....com/tp/#590715
“Impossible is nothing”
http://translat....com/tp/#596920
“chinese invented paper but americans use it more.”
http://translat....com/tp/#597061
“microsoft bought yahoo search”
http://translat....com/tp/#597200
three stepped loop
“an apple a day keeps doctor away” becomes “Apple is a doctor”
http://translat....com/tp/#597273
“trust me, i’m a doctor”…
Awesome.
Spacelocker, A Social Network You’ll Want To Avoid Like The Plague => http://translat....com/tp/#623911
Slow news day?
http://translat....com/tp/#493938
all your base are belong to us -> All members of the Foundation
tip to the site owner: this would be great fun for other languages, too.
I don’t like Japanese
http://translat....com/tp/#526955
It probably works best with Japanese because it’s completely opposite grammatical structures unlike most other languages. English is subject-verb-object whereas Japanese is subject-object-verb (I love you –> I you love)
so is a bunch of other non-European languages, including Korean, all with their differences in vocab, grammar, and existing composite expressions
Most languages in the world are subject-object-verb.
I would pick the one phrase that has perfect equilibrium:
today is a good day to die
今日は良い一日死ぬことです
Today is a good day to die
今日は良い一日死ぬことです
Today is a good day to die
The person who thought to try “May the Force be with you.” is awesome.
Dude you should try your own sentence:
“The person who thought to try “May the Force be with you.” is awesome.”
Thats hilarious
Mine will maybe never find equilibrium. But the successive derived versions are quite fun
http://translat....com/tp/#463220
I can do this all day
“How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?” becomes “Oh my my number, I Do I need a man in front of a public road?”. Epic.
first star on the right, straight on til morning.
becomes
In the morning, right, is the first series of the stars of the sesame seeds.
http://translat....com/tp/#518310
Here’s a fun one…
http://translat....com/tp/#464725
This is awesome! I always used to do this manually. It’s so fun.
I’m surprised this isn’t a Y-crap startup.
It’s not really a start up, otherwise it would be!
http://translat....com/tp/#808706
Jason Kinclaid is awesome –> Jason is a great Kinclaid
http://translat....com/tp/#466070
http://translat....com/tp/#464874
Cases, tree, tree, tree CHAKKUCHAKKUCHAKKUCHAKKU?
It is doubtful that this phrase will ever reach equilibrium.
On the other hand, inserting a comme produces…
http://translat....com/tp/#466996
Thursday wood wood chuck wood?
“To be what you must, you must give up what you are” becomes “If I had to”. Awesome.
How about some Macedonian?
“I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that” becomes “I love to do nothing for me”.
I can see Russia from my house
http://translat....com/tp/#469927
Atlas gets poetic:
http://translat....com/tp/#468223
and I broke it with this:
“monday is the first day of the week”
not really broken, but it does have limits.
I think I broke it:
http://translat....com/tp/#470805
“I’ve been watching Lost on Netflix on my Xbox”
Some of the gems along the way to infinite loopage:
“I sense the loss of my Netflix, Xbox was the”
“I am well through your Xbox, Netflix is a copy of my lost”
Holy shit is this funny!
http://translat....com/tp/#472379
Mega-awesome!
Uh Oh:
http://translat....com/tp/#473961
Oh shoot!
o.0
apparently it has another url as a backup for some reason: http://www.redh...dleague.com/tp/
if you type in http://translationparty.com/tp without the last slash the redheadedleague.com sites comes up
I was at a day-of-launch presentation of this at the New York Tech MeetUp. The guy who created it has red hair, so that is why it’s called that.
He’s pretty funky.
this one is hilarious
http://translat....com/tp/#475292
you gotta try this one
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
“Get the fuck off of my lawn, asshole kids!”
Turns into:
“My lawn, free child sex!”
http://translat....com/tp/#477615 [nsfw]
offers some fascinating political insights:
http://translat....com/tp/#479186
This was is good
http://translat....com/tp/#478805
i’m loving it -> Pavilion, bushels, and I love the morning
http://translat....com/tp/#479492
enjoy it SLAVES…this is all part of mindless surfers helping google augment their SMT core with a traditional linguistic implementation…clever use of mechanical turks!!!
http://translat....com/tp/#810135
I started putting in W.B. Yeats “The Second Coming”
The second line -
“The falcon cannot hear the falconer; ”
Results in “No equilibrium can be found.”
Some ironic stuff that/
What is that? (double slash at the end of the url)
http://translationparty.com//
This might explain: http://www.redh...dleague.com/tp/
yea, seem everytime we call an a**, it failed the answer.
http://translat....com/tp/#482766
Heck, this sounds awfully the same as the ‘Lost in translation’ experiment for Babelfish: http://tashian.com/multibabel/
‘Created September 10, 2000′
Stumped the system – “May I please have a beer”
Been there, done that… back in dec 2000 – http://www.ston...xMag/col19.html
Of course, back then, it was “babelfish”, but it still was about the same thing.
U rock! Why didn’t you get VC funding to build it out into a destination site. You could’ve been retired by now!
In translationparty “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” reduces entirely to “wimpish”.
I’m not sure that’s a terrible translation actually.
I do enjoy the fact that I found an infinite loop. Good thing their developers made sure to check for that
try: how many kids do you have?
http://translat....com/tp/#486080
http://translat....com/tp/#485906
How many letters are there in the alphabet?
http://translat....com/tp/#492977
“I am feeling so tired I can use some sleep and couple of drinks”
–>
“And drink, and his wife, I feel asleep”
“It is better to have loved and lost, then to never have loved at all.” ==> “He has not lost the love of our love.” Classic
How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Gets right down to the basics. This one was awesome:
http://translat....com/tp/#494554
+1
Oddly enough, with a comma in it and question mark at the end – it yields a different result.
http://translat....com/tp/#536521
Hehe
When I am standing next to you, I luck f****** soft
(A song text from The Streets)
turns into
Software F*****, I think I’m lucky
Funny! No?
“Ask not what your country can do for you,” yields:
(after a while)
“First, if the country can have a single doubt”
It is doubtful that this phrase will ever reach equilibrium.
“One small step for a man, one giant step for mankind”
yields:
“Big small step for mankind”
Equilibrium found!
Come on, you can do better than that.
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
It might help if you actually quote something that -is- a quote — friggin numbnutts!
It would help if astronauts were taught basic grammar. I know very well what Neil Armstrong said. Unfortunately it was not what he meant, and also makes no sense.
And your gratuitous insult only reflects poorly on yourself.
Wikipedia: “Armstrong had decided on this statement following a train of thought that he had had after launch and during the hours after landing.[38] Speaking the line, he accidentally dropped the “a”, from his remark, rendering the phrase a contradiction (as man in such use is synonymous with mankind). Armstrong later said he “would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it was not said – although it might actually have been.” It has since been claimed that acoustic analysis of the recording reveals the presence of the missing “a”.”
End quote. So I apologise to Armstrong. He “misspoke.” He does know his grammar.
“We are in the mouth of a kebab and I think that is really appreciated.”
This is unbelievably awesome
http://translat....com/tp/#505885
http://translat....com/tp/#506412
my boss has his head up his asshole => Stupid boss
Think of movie where whole dialogue list would me treated by that =) For some movies it wouldn’t make difference tho..
My friends and I used to use bablefish to translate Simpsons quotes into German and back and then challenge each other to see if we could figure out what the original quote was. Good for endless hours of fun.
She sells seashells on the seashore, the shells she sells are seashells I’m sure.
———-
It is doubtful that this phrase will ever reach equilibrium.
“how can to you”
can never reach equilibrium