h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Many of you may well be aware of the Babelfish - a wonderful internet gadget which does more or less what the Babelfish did in h2g2.

http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr

I've just been amusing myself by feeding it football cliches and seeing what it comes up with. For example, as Johan Cruyff might say about Peter Crouch, "hij heeft een goede aanraking voor een grote mens"

Or, in the words of Jimmy Buzzard of Jarrow United, "ik raakte de bal eerste keer en daar was het in de rug van het net"

The babelfish service is crap. As one ought to expect given that it's free.

Try translating a phrase back into English, and I'll bet you it looks totally mangled compared to what you originally said. For an even worse example try translating through two foreign languages, say English to French then to German and back to English. You'll end up with total gobbledigook

Of course. It's very literal. For example, for reasons that are quite complex, I asked it for the Italian translation of "get 'em off!"

It came up with "ottengali fuori".

Which I then translated back into English, and it said that meant "it obtains them outside"

The great thing with this is that you can play Babelfish chinese whispers...

It's literallity (sp? a proper word, even?) is one of the problems!

Back during the Gulf War I translated my nickname to include the phrase "No war for oil" in French. The trouble was it hadn't given me the word for oil that describes the black stuff. No, it had given me the word that best describes oil in a vinaigrette.

So there was my proudly shouting, "No war for salad dressing", for a couple of months, before some native French speaker took pity on me and let me into why they had all been laughing at me.

A few preliminary experiments gives:

I am over the moon, John (-> German -> French -> English) = I am on the moon John.

It's a game of two halves (-> Portuguese -> French -> English) = It is a set of two parts.

The boy done well (-> Italian -> French -> English) = The boy makes well.

Any game away from home is a tough one (->French -> Dutch -> English) = Any game far from house is hard

I tell you what, I would love it if we beat them now. I would bloody love it. (-> Greek -> English) = To you I say what, I him would love #
if to them we strike now. Bloody him I would love.

B

You sure you didn't put that into Keegan instead of English B ?