Re: Just Found a Website That's Priceless

David Peterson scripsit:

> It translates English into various foreign languages and then back into
> English via online translators, resulting in gibberish.
Furthermore, you can keep hitting "Try again" to let the process go through
another English-French-English-German-English-Italian-English-Portuguese-
English-Spanish-English cycle.  I thought it would be interesting to see
how long it would be before we got to an attractor (a sentence that does
not change).

Short tests lead to an attractor within 7-8 iterations.  So I decided to
test it with this passage:

# This book contains practical, real-world example programs that demonstrate
# the new features in Java 1.1, including the new AWT event handling
# model, the JavaBeans API, internationalization, object serialization,
# and reflection.

(a blurb from the back of a techie book, obviously).

After 30 iterations, I gave up.  Here are the products of the 29th and
30th iterations.  They are closely similar, but not quite identical, and
of course both absolute rubbish.  The underscores are provided by the program.

#  _ of the forms of reservations of __ alcan with the program, of that this
#  extension, if this example of the piece, marcature, of this the form
#  and the connoissor, is always we he, to the east, is this represents
#  on the other hand of this with examinaci__n he he he he EC, university
#  of the EC, that realnesses to the left of the production he he with
#  this with this relative function with the place of Java of 1,1 that
#  marcature of the father had had those here, with this new constant he
#  he he he he he he he he he he example AWT, of this one with this bee
#  of sensible JavaBeans, internationalization, in which it gives him
#  to the forms with the circumstance of the T, the one that it gives,
#  that he is he therefore.

#  _ of the forms of reservations of __ alcan with the program, this this
#  extension, if this example of the piece, marcature, of this the form
#  and the connoissor, is always we he, in the east, is this one represents
#  this with examinaci__n he ulteriorly he he he EC, university of the EC,
#  that realnesses with the left to of the production he he with this with
#  this relative function with the place of Java of 1,1, of that marcature
#  of the father who had had those here, with this new constant he he he
#  he he he he he he he he he example AWT, of this sensible JavaBeans, the
#  internationalization, in how much it gives that one to the forms with the
#  circumstance of the T he, of that one is here, that he is he therefore.

--
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        jcowan@reutershealth.com
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There are
no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that
they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful. --The Hobbit