Fun with Babel Fish

The vodka is strong but the meat is rotten was the result of machine-translating The spirit is wlling but the flesh is weak into Russian and back to English [1]. This anecdote is often cited to underline the inherent difficulty of translation, and of machine translation in particular.

Now that machine translation is (finally) good enough to be useful, that experiment can be easily replicated and improved upon -- for fun, if not for wisdom.

The two texts below were translated back and forth between English and Portuguese, by Altavista's Babel Fish transation service, through 10 complete cycles.

• The attributed weapons and barons ...
  P0 E0 P1 E1 P2 E2 P3 E3 P4 E4
  P5 E5 P6 E6 P7 E7 P8 E8 P9 E9
   
• Para ser, ou para não ser ...
  E0 P0 E1 P1 E2 P2 E3 P3 E4 P4
  E5 P5 E6 P6 E7 P7 E8 P8 E9 P9
   

Note that line 6 of Camões's text has grown steadily with each iteration. The growth pattern is not obvious; is it unbounded? Is there a text that grows faster than linearly -- perhaps exponentially?

Admitteddly, old poetic language with obsolete spelling is not a fair test of Babel Fish. However, the tool does not seem to fare much better with "ordinary" language:

• If you this jambs to posess the credit card ...
  P0 E0 P1 E1 P2 E2 P3 E3 P4 E4
  P5 E5 P6 E6 P7 E7 P8 E8 P9 E9
   
• Sério somente que um cartão ...
  E0 P0 E1 P1 E2 P2 E3 P3 E4 P4
  E5 P5 E6 P6 E7 P7 E8 P8 E9 P9
   

Note again the diverging iteration in the second example, last line. Note also that Babel Fish's English->Portuguese dictionary is very poor -- too many common words are left untranslated. Note also that "stops" is translated to the rare noun "batentes" ("jambs") instead of the common verb "pára" ("he/she/it stops").

See Also

• [1] Recorded by a new York Times reporter at the 1964 Worlds Fair (witnessed by Alan Karp).
• [2]Geoffrey A. Landis.