Sunday, November 12, 2006

Lost In Translation or Babel Fish

Here is an interesting look at how easily things are lost in translation... I took the following text from a box of Lipton Yellow Label Tea. This text is written on the box in English and Russian... here is how Babel fish translated it for me:

Orginal English: "Hand picked close the the bud for best quality tea and finest taste"

Babel Fish translation of russian text: "the refined refreshing taste, which stores in itself the natural perfection of the upper leaflets of the highest quality, assembled by hand"

Orginal english text translated to russian and back: "Hand selected its close to bud for the best tea of quality and majorities of the precise taste"

Original russian text translated to english to korean to english to greek to french to dutch to english: "With in the natural enemy above the brochure of quality he unites of the hand which the wall Yan of institutions the preference which puts on so that he is by living making is cleaned,"

I think the biggist mystery is how that comma got added on to the end...

4 comments:

Dasha said...

woh... that is weird

faith said...

Thanks for the laugh. I have always liked (and hated) how you can make the ordinary absurd.

Anna P said...

Wow, you had a lot of time on your hands!

Dasha said...

Five minutes is all.

But I always told Mrs. Hall: "Sure, I only spend time five minutes writing this... but I spent all WEEK coming up with it!"