Re: CHAT: OFF: Eddie Izzard (Re: CHAT: Champaign!)

Paul Bennett wrote:
>
> See if you recognise this (unedited) Babelfished extract:
> Babelfish>>>>>>
[Babelfish sample]

> It's certainly close enough for me to understand.  At least I understand the
> result, whether it is what you intended is another question.  I'd say it's close
> enough to "hand-tune", certainly.
>
        It is indeed. I'm impressed! It's a little awckward but close to what I
wanted to say. Maybe because this page was meant to be easily read, even
in French, so I employed very simple words.

>
>         Interesting. How does he do with a mostly monolingual audience? Is it a
> humour more on intonations and movements than on words themselves?
> <<<<<<
> It relies mostly on the fact that the French he uses is *very* simple French,
> generally "first/second person present indicative" of the kind that everyone
> remembers from school (or at least remembers enough to grok it).  A lot of the
> French he uses is based on his experiences learning French.  He himself is
> fairly fluent, I think you'd have to be to come up with a lot of what he comes
> up with.
>
> The school visit includes a tour of a glue factory, with a description of how
> the factory works that goes something like this: (from memory)
> Teacher: "Un cheval - Pas de glue ... Pas de cheval - Beaucoup de glue"
> Student: "C'est merde pour le cheval!"
> Teacher: (thoughtfully) "Oui"
>
> Now, for some reason, that's highly amusing to an English audience (at least to
> me and the audience on the video), don't ask me why...
>
        I won't, humour is such an unexplainable thing... :)

--
        Christophe Grandsire

        Philips Research Laboratories --  Building WB 145
        Prof. Holstlaan 4
        5656 AA Eindhoven
        The Netherlands

        Phone:  +31-40-27-45006
        E-mail: grandsir@natlab.research.philips.com