Translation games

Thu 17 May 2012 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Alberto Chimal, Chris N. Brown, Skynet, Three Messages and a Warning, translation| Posted by: Gavin

When Three Messages and a Warning came out one of the things we meant to do was play with Google Translate. Hold that thought, let a few months pass, find a quiet Thursday afternoon and here we are.

So:

1. here’s the story in the English translation
2. then the same story run through Google from English to Spanish (enjoy, Hispanophones!),
3. and, lastly the machine Spanish translation retranslated by Google from Spanish to English—using a different browser so that it did not just return the original text.

I used one of the shorter stories in the book, “Variation on a Theme of Coleridge” by Alberto Chimal [video of author reading], translated by co-editor Chris N.Brown so that you can buzz through it and easily compare: Read more

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