Jakub brought up an interesting idea in the Bad Translator thread, and for better organization, I suggest starting an interesting experiment.

Everyone is welcome to join, it'll only take some minutes of your time.

Idea

For the ones who don't know about it, the whole point of this experiment is seeing how Humans would fare in a situation like the Bad Translator, and compare the results. Of course, I don't expect we can find speakers of 54 languages, but this is a big international community, so we can do a pretty good work.

Also, you can't deny it sounds fun.

(I'm open to suggestions here. If you think the idea below is unpractical and have a better solution, please say so )

Experiment

The whole event would be some simple phases:

• A group of people participate as translators.

• A participant is told to translate a phrase and send it to another participant.

• When the chain ends, I receive the final result and it gets posted.

Process

This is how I think the event should be organized.

Final thoughts:

So, who wants to join the fun? Even though the above process might look long, for the participants is only simplified to:
- Say you participate with X language(s).
- Receive a PM with your task.
- When you receive a PM with the translated phrase, do your job and send it to the next person.
- Send a PM to me with the translated phrase too.

As simple as that.

BTW, a single participant can act as more than a single link in the chain if he's willing to translate to more languages.
Cross that. A participant can only act as a translator in one link of the chain. ^[3]

To say you want to participate, you can post something as simple as this:
LanguageX <--> English
(This means back and forth)
LanguageX --> English
(Can only translate from LanguageX to English)
LanguageX <-- English
(Can only translate from English to LanguageX)

Covered languages actual list:

• Dutch

• German

• Hebrew

• Spanish

• Swedish

• Finnish

• French

No More Entries

The time's up, and translation chain is in progress. Everyone, look in your PMs inbox once in a while. Good luck and have fun!

Are you planning on taking the translation direction into account? For example, while I would be quite comfortable translating, say, German to Swedish, the opposite would not be true...

No, it's different. Since I'm trying to mimic the Bad Translator, the order goes like this:

English -> German -> English -> Swedish -> English

EDIT: Of course, everyone's assumed to know English on this board.

Funny experiment. Instead of just one phrase, I think it'd be better if the message consisted of several phrases.

I can do Spanish and Catalan.

[edit]

Spanish <--> English
Catalan <--> English

I can do Dutch in either direction.
I can have a go at going from German or possibly French to English (rather not if we're doing multiple sentences because it may take me too long then).
To make things interesting I might be persuaded to do Latin->English as well.

We should be able to get Piccolo to do the Nameks

I can do english <--> french

I was thinking of picking a paragraph too. I'll have to think about it. If more people feel like this is much better, then a paragraph it'll be(maybe composed from 3-4 phrases).

Evert: Great. I suppose someone else here can speak Dutch too.

But we'd need another namekian to translate it back to English.

Great, that seems like an easy way to keep a list of the languages and the directions you can translate. So the rest of you can use syntax like this^[1]

OK, sounds kinda like a fun experiment. I can do Spanish <--> English. If you end up with a lot of translators for a language, you can always do something like:

English -> Spanish -> English -> Spanish -> English -> Spanish -> English

It would end up being some sort of Chinese Whispers game.

Also, how many runs would take place?. I mean, I would gladly participate in the first run, but it wouldn't be fun after that. So, if there's only one run, how many phrases or sentences will enter?, it would be a lot of trouble going through this for one single sentence.

Sounds fun
I can do English <=> Russian
& Hebrew => English

Edit:
Actually Hebrew <=> English, and even any combination of the three..
My good friend.

Furthermore, I'm not sure how is it to run with all notifications.. If somehow, something.. Contact details: type568, hosted at(@) the respected google mail service.

I can do Malay <=> English!

Italy is here
(i could translate from french to english, but it could come out quite funny )

I can translate Slovenian and German to/from English.

I think it's pretty obvious that I support the idea . My original idea was testing professional translators, but this will be fun nevertheless.

Polish ⇔ English
German ⇒ English
German ⇒ Polish

I can do Hebrew<-->English as well.

Let's see:
Dutch <--> English
German --> English
I could try English --> German but I'm sure I would make a lot of spelling errors.
French --> English although I'm quite rusty nowadays
And of course German --> Dutch and French --> Dutch

Wow, now that increases the the number of languages. Thanks everyone for participating.

If you check the first post, I'll list what languages we've got covered, and which need 1 more translator. This should help to motivate some people and they can look better at what's needed.

That's one of the ideas I had in mind. Still, I'm not participating(I can do Spanish <--> English), since I'd be biased in trying to translate the phrase to the original meaning(I'd be the only one that knows the phrases while the PM chain happens).

I've decided it'll be a paragraph composed of 3 sentences. If the event takes place again, I might as well use the same PM chain. We will see how it turns out--who knows, maybe it's fun enough to do another run.

I don't know if the PM system is capable of using many foreign characters. If you feel a bit restricted with it, you're free to use an image that's legible enough.

It'll all be done via PM. If you want me to send you a mail to that address just to inform you that you received the PM, I will. I don't check my mailbox normally, I log in more often to the forum. Allegro.cc informs you nicely that you got a PM(It's so yellow you'll surely notice it).

Who chooses the sentences?. It has to be someone who is not participating, right?. So, that would be you, Dario?.

Also, I'd say we call this the TranslatorHack 2010 now.

I'll choose the sentences. I'm open to any suggestions by a non-participating member (He/She'd have to send me a PM).

I'll make sure to pick a typical paragraph you can expect in an English course. Not too complicated, but not too dumbo.

Even though the name surely sounds nice, I don't think we can fit this in the category of Hacks.

Swedish <--> English

I think that something like 3 independent phrases could probably give a funnier outcome than a 3-line paragraph.

Seconded. I'd use 5 independent sentences to maximise the value of this test, since it's more likely than not that we will only be able to do this once .

Well, that's going to take some more work for the translators and for the history. If most of you don't mind doing the extra work, then 5 sentences it'll be.

As Jakub said, this might be the only chance.

I don't mind, translating a couple of sentences is no effort at all, and it would make the experiment more cool.

Ok, I've added a notice to the first post indicating that anyone not participating is free to send me a PM with suggestions for the 5 sentences. Most of you US or GB residents can surely come up with some funny or catchy phrases.

This would compromise the integrity of the "experiment". The translator getting the message for the second time would have earlier data to base his translation on. He could even outright ignore the latest version he got and translate the original again.

I was just about to make that point.

Wonder why I didn't thought of that. Thanks to both of you.

I guess that there'll be a new restriction. Luckily, that doesn't change the actual list of languages.

Spanish <--> English

Dutch ⟷ English
Japanese ⟷ English

Fine, I'm in.

English ⟷ English.

But I actually often don't know when will my next login to allegro.cc is bound to happen, yet gmail has notifier.

Allegro.cc is always my first tab in Firefox. Vimperator makes it quite convenient: g0.

bamcca, and in simple English? T_T

Last day for entries people!

Remember that if we got 1 more translator of these languages, we can extend the chain. Otherwise, I'll have to kick out people.

I think someone else can help us here with Swedish easily.

So far, we've got 10 translators in the chain.(5 languages) If we get another Spanish speaker(ReyBrujo? Paul whoknows?) we can extend the chain with 2 more translations. If we can reach something like 16 translators or 20, that'd certainly spice things up.

BTW, I got some suggestions already for the sentences. They are pretty fun, and we'll see how some of you can translate them. The 5 sentences will have a difficulty curve, the first being something like a simple everyday phrase, and the last one much more complicated.

u missed Hebrew, there are 2 people that can do it

That's the list of the languages I'm looking for 1 more translator. The actual list of languages is in the first post, and includes Hebrew.

Oh. There were 2x Russian too I think.. Or is it 3?:P
Append: No, I'm wrong.. Guess we should call for Gnolam or smthng..

A quick search in the thread shows that you're the only translating from or to Russian. There's another problem though. If another Russian translator showed up, I'd either need 1 more Hebrew translator, or 1 more Russian translator. Since you and Slart are the only ones translating Hebrew, you can assume both of you are going to next to the other one in the chain.

I don't think you have a problem with translating from a dog, right kitty?

I'm not a kitty, I'm male!
And sigh this nose.... <3

However, if another Russian shows up, what's the issue of me doing both Heb & Rus?

You can't act as more than a single link in the chain. I know I said that you could before, but bamccaig brought up a good reason not to above:

The problem is that it could cause to create a biased translation in your second "go" as you'd already know what the text looked like several iterations ago.
One possible solution would be English->Russian->Hebrew->English, but that would go against the original rules.

EDIT: sorta ninja'd

After attempting a newspaper article translation from German to Polish, I hereby retract my offer to translate from German. Too rusty .

So, only Polish ⇔ English for me.

There were more Polish people onboard: I remember CursedTyrant and (haven't seen him for quite some time) Krzysztof Kluczek, but I don't know if either of them is still active.

Put me down for Swedish <-> English then.
BTW, there should be more than enough Finns on this forum to do Finnish<->English as well...

Great, thanks gnolam. That makes 12 translations so far.

The only two ones I know of that are regulars here are Johan Halmén and jhuuskon. I don't know if they'll like to participate though... (maybe if I hunt them down)

Yeah, true.. Since it's the same phrase, I can't do it twice.

Ok, I can do Finnish. We still need jhuuskon. My native language is Swedish but I speak 100% Finnish. jhuuskon is a native Finnish speaker.

Thanks Johan. Much appreciated.

Eeek! It seems I'm running short on a French translator. (Had to sort the list again) I've got one particular person in mind... Though he might add some swearing.

Or we could get someone from Canada too.

Speaking of Canada...

Adding "eh?" doesn't count .

Or Inphernic. Or ixilom.

Inphernic would fuck it all up. You might as well recruit Yves.

Why doubt in Inphernic? Like if you were Mr. Responsibility.

Why don't you join us? Here's your first sentence:

EDIT: Ok, since there's a big amount of languages that need 1 more translator, and the people that could participate don't seem to be online now, I'll push the entries date 1 more day. The problem is we are on 10 translations again, since I had to drop out one of the links in the PM chain.

Hopefully, some of the people I have in mind will log in tomorrow. Tomorrow nearing the night, no matter how much people we have, we'll start the translations.

Just to be sure you got it right, I can do
English <=> Swedish
English <=> Finnish
Finnish <=> Swedish

I think I could add
German => English
German => Swedish
German => Finnish

In the past I have known Inphernic to be quite the troll. He's (and I say "he" loosely!) the only member whom I have CSS to block; and not his posts, but his goddamn avatar!!!1 That is one sick minded fuck...

This.

If by "us" you mean "intellectual property pirates" then search the forums. I've met no good reason to "pirate" "intellectual property". I find it quite weak.

"Piracy is not theft."

...54 translations later we get:

Nice one.

However, some additional idea(not sure how is it currently implemented to be honest, oh well):

I think it would be nice, if we wouldn't be translating just one paragraph, but a set of phrases(or whatever, but not too long), which would be as a list and unrelated to each other.

Aka:
Not:
Software piracy is not theft because after copying an original content it isn't lost.

But more like:

1. Software piracy is not theft.
2. I love eating bananas.

It's of course to be something longer, but.. I hope you get the point.

P.S.
It looks like I'm selected for Hebrew.. If so, I'd highly prefer to translate Hebrew => English, and not the opposite as I don't have Hebrew on my keyboard.

What makes translating hard is that things only make sense with sufficient context. A single sentence (and definitely single phrases) may not carry enough context to determine its meaning precisely. But a whole paragraph already might.

Machine translation on the other hand works mechanically only with words and phrases and perhaps some syntactic constructs.

I've just received your pm.

I join in the French <= => English part (please notice the double <= => ;-) )

The lack of context is what makes it interesting: how bad compared to a computer translator will we do? Dario, you could do the initial translation to Spanish, couldn't you? I assume you have made a roster and we will notice when things get started.

Yay for me hunting people down.

We got Gully onboard doing French, and jhuuskon has confirmed for doing Finnish.

Oh come on, it's obvious I was teasing you to translate a sentence that goes against your morality. (It's confirmed, your sense of humour is beyond human comprehension)

Good one.

I didn't make an statement in the first post, but we decided it'll be 5 independent sentences, varying from a simple phrase, to something much more complicated. That way, I want to see which aspects of a sentence have a bad influence when doing translations.

Good call, I had you for doing English --> Hebrew. I already switched your place with Slartibartfast. Now you'll be translating from him to English.

You're right. I guess I wouldn't be biased at all. And that way, I don't have to leave Crazy Photon out. That increases the roster to 16 translators!

There's only then 3 people that need another translator:

• Jakub Wasilewski(Polish)

• FMC(Italian)

• Fishcake(Malay)

Or they'll have to be left out.

Yep, I already have the PM chain organized. All of you will receive a PM first explaining who should send you the sentences and in what language, to what language you must translate, and your recipient. Then, I'll start the chain when the time arrives. Probably this night or tomorrow.

Swedish <-> English here

Thanks Jonatan. If I find another swedish translator, I'll put you in the chain too.

You're doing all the work anyways, so perhaps it's not nice.. But anyways:
Perhaps some magic with skipping some English, would let no one be out?

& btw, will we get all the chain as a forum post in the very end?:D
I guess that would really be an interesting addition..

It isn't really much effort at all. I'm merely coordinating the list. Translating 5 sentences isn't hard.

Even if I skipped some English parts, I would still need two people that can translate the same language. The three participants I listed don't have any chance to participate if there's no one else that can translate their language. I think Fishcake would have to be left out specially, since Malay isn't a widely known language. I'm sorry for that, maybe I'll look a way to compensate the ones who're left out.

Another solution would be to use Google Translator for the languages that don't have 1 more translator, but that would go against the original rules!

Yes. Maybe in a new thread so anyone can see and discuss the results. Each of the sentences will be shown first as the initial and final result, and the whole chain in detail to see where they changed.

Nope, nonsense.. For obvious reasons.

Woot!

P.S:

Piracy is not theft.
Пиратствo этo не вoрoвствo. => Poor structuring but correct.
Piracy is not theft. (no idea if he used his memory, or whatsoever, but..)

.....

Same with Hebrew.

& same with Eng=>Rus=>Heb=>Eng

But his grammar sux. (translate.google.com)

Edit:
So maybe we can use translate.google.com, but.. I dunno how right will it translate..

Append:
No, it's dangerous.
"There is no cow level." translates in to Russian nonsense, that much nonsense that I've literally no idea what does it mean.

Append1:
Though who doesn't risk, doesn't drink champagne..

I vote for everyone in, and google translator for those without a pair.

No, I'll take back the idea. It'd tamper the results. The experiment would be in vain.

I'm sorry if some people will be left out.

EDIT: BTW, the Bad translator:
"Piracy is not theft"

No Google translator. The idea is to see how bad human translators do in comparison with it, in the first place.

Dario fortissimo, if you do this properly and document it very well, it might have some real scientific value. I bet some linguistics and maybe sociologists would be very interested in the results. Everybody is talking about social networks in education nowadays and a.cc is clearly a social network with a rather high coherency. a.cc might even hit the headlines somewhere.

I hope all participants will obey the rules. No cheating, no asking of what others did, no no-noes at all.

That's why I'll insist that each of the translators send me the sentences too. If I spot something weird going on(One of the participants sends me a confirmation when the last one hasn't), I'll decide in redoing the experiment or solving it if it's possible.

And I'm also wondering if I should make the list of the PM chain public. Maybe it'd be good for organization, but participants shouldn't know in what position they are or who to ask the past iterations of the sentences.

I'm also amazed that we got so much people involved! This will surely have really interesting results. Thanks to everyone.

We're at 16 translators now. I'll try to send all the PMs tonight(which would be in 6 hours here). Then when that's done, I'll make my translation and send to the next one. Hopefully, all goes along smoothly.

If we can get 4 more translators(or 2, for Italian or Polish), that'd make a much nicer number.

Which would be awesome. Now I wish I knew a second language so I could participate.

1 hour remaining for entries. I have tested the PM chain, made all the messages(took me a while to write them), and everything seems to work fine.

Yet, I'm asking urgently for any non-participants to do me a little favour. I have 5 sentences, but I don't really know if they meet the standards of perfect, clean English. So if any of you English speakers could confirm if they're formed well, drop me a PM.

Maybe we can put you in the credits like a witness and supporter of the idea:
"I was there while it all happened! I can confirm it, it was great!" - Neil Black.

But I didn't really do anything. However:

That's something I can do.

Ok, Neil already helped me, though it wouldn't hurt to have someone else's opinion. Just to confirm it a bit more(got some doubts about some commas).

EDIT: Ok, confirmed. The sentences are correct. I won't say for now who helped me though, in case any of you cheaters want to threaten him/her.^[1]

Just kidding, I trust all of you to don't try to mess up this or cheat. For science people!

EDIT2: Ok, time's up! No more entries people! I'll start sending the PMs. Good luck everyone, and have fun!

EDIT3: Phew, done sending all the PM, I hope that a ML's bot won't detect me as a Nigerian scammer for sending 19 PMs under 15 minutes.

Here's my translation into Finnish:

Olen nigerialainen prinssi ja...

...just kidding.

Cool, here we go

ReyBrujo can translate EULA's to/from English, but I can't find the post now.

Wow. This seems like quite the experiment. I'm glad I could be a part of it.

eagerly awaiting his message

piccolo can do anything -> piccolo.

I can do piccolo -> English.

Matt, that one made my day !!!

Jhuuskon, I am waiting my task ^^ !

Ahh! 7 new PMS! Holy shit, that was fast...

Oh wait, only one of 'em holded the translations. The magical powers of the sent/outbox messages tells me that all of you already red your assignments. Great.

We've got the first translation in. Can't wait to see what happens with other languages.

Johan, don't translate your spam.

Next turn is Evert's. Do any of you know which time he's used to log in?

Oh BTW, I'll start translating the whole chain with Google Translator in the order of the languages we have here. After all, the point is to show how we would fare compared to it. Obviously, I won't post it until the chain gets back to me.

have nothing to do

After a quick look on his profile, it looks like he posts around 19:00 of our local time, so we need to wait for 3-4 hours at least.

Mornings, evenings, afternoons on small breaks from work...

I saw the message in my PM box this morning, but because it requires me to actually sit down and do something with it I haven't done the translation yet. Probably in the next few minutes.

Google translator, gives poor quality of the actual translation.. But I think each reversed translation, will result in the original text.. That's how he translates. I'm not sure if it's any possible to feed him with a phrase from English to language X, and then his outcome in X, back to English & get a phrase that would any differ.

It does. It's giving different results right now by translating back and forth.

That's exactly what Bad Translator does. The fact that it messes up so hilariously is what spawned this whole experiment.

Gimme example of that English phrase, and target language then.
I tried a bit, and couldn't get anything.

Bad Translator thread.

Ok, done.
Required a bit of interpretation on what was meant on one of them, interesting to see where that goes.

I suspect translator bots mess up in subtle ways over grammar, while humans will generally correct those silently but change the meaning slightly by picking different words.

Usually when I "translate" I look at what I want to say and then say that in whatever language I'm translating to. I tried to be a little bit more careful here in terms of words and particles I included.

If this PM chain succeeds, I'll contact the guys over at ConveyThis(the Bad Translator creators), and see what they think about it. We might hit the headlines somewhere as Johan said.

Apparently I'm too tired at the moment to do the sentences; as it seems Hollandisms pop up. Gonna look tomorrow again. (Also noticing my knowledge of proper punctuation in English is lacking...)
I wonder: if you gave a computer just as much time as a human, could it deliver comparable results? The computer would run (statistical) 'context' algorithms, while the human looks in his dictionary...

No problem, you have 2 days to do it. The translators that have done their task already took extra care in picking the words carefully, so it'd be best if you can do it when you're in good condition.

I understand also considering the last sentence is a bit... complicated.

If you have any doubts about punctuation, send them to me and I'll double check with someone here.

I think everyone should just punctuate in the way that seems natural to them. I didn't even look at the punctuation of the English sentences for doing the translation (I actually though some of the commas probably shouldn't have been there), because punctuation rules in Dutch are different anyway.
In fact, I think they're different in British and American English as well.

If there are punctuation errors in the original sentences, they might get corrected on the way. Kind of unconciously.

I am hoping for this^ to happen.

Wooho! 8 Translations are in! We're halfway there folks!

I won't post my comments about the translations though, since that might get some of you biased. So no teasers, it's pure privacy for now.

Man, wtf? :/
We want results of the experiment. At least only skip those ask to be skipped. I wanna see as much as possible, I'm sure most do.

Append: At least skip the names, and only post the English versions...

Umm, the whole point of using the PM chain is none of you can see the translations in progress so you don't get biased when making your translation. If other people could see it, it would be like Google Translator getting the first sentence and translating it to X language.

And there's no way I can make a semi public/private log depending on the members.

Don't worry though, it seems to be going a bit fast these hours. Maybe we'll get this done by the end of the week.

:S I thought you don't wanna give it out at all, although you promised you would. Of course, I don't ask it unless it's finished. But when it is, I really wanna see all of it. I'm interested in it as in an experiment after all.. There are much more things to think about except for the "input" & the "output".

That's why I said for now. I know all of the participants are surely curious to look at the results, but if there was even a tiny clue(words shifted, everything's perfect, everything sucks!), that'd get the participants biased, even if they had the most strong will on Earth to remain true to the translation.

When the PM chain finishes, I'll document this, make some comments and analyzations, and post the end results, both short version(Start, End result) and long version(detailed translations).

I sent it back to my target. Am I done ? I want more translations !! ;-)

Yep, it's done for you. I can't put you in the chain again, since you'd know your latest iteration of the sentences. If you want to keep translating for fun, you can join us again the next time if I organize this thing again sometime.

So if you want to do something else, start posting in French in this thread!

No! Translate the whole thread into French. It would be valuable for all the French linguistics getting interested in this science project.

Well, I did my part. It was kind of tricky trying to interpret the meanings already!

Hooray! Now its my turn to do a little Germanization!

You are kidding Johan, it's too much pain ^^

When's my turn, when's my turn? -.-

Oh dear.
The first three were fine. The fourth needed a bit of interpretation. The last one was a bit weird.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what we end up with in the end.

Great, 2 more translations are in. Next is lambik. Thanks to everyone!

2 more translations.

If I explode, it's your fault Dario!

I don't know, play this meanwhile.

Oh yeah, it's ordered in alphabetic order, so blame the abecedary for putting Hebrew after German.

Argh!

Does your abecedary by any chance put your language first than the others?

In this thread, only Finnish and Swedish are after Hebrew in the Hebrew alphabet.
And if type568 has two people ahead of him that means that I'm after lambik

I love your nose. Let's hope I'll love your translation too:P

That's a part of what makes this little experiment interesting. Even if the phrases lose their meaning along the PM chain, we can do some interpretation while a machine can't. We'll see how well that turns out.

So Spanish must be near the end of the chain, right?. I wonder if that's a good or a bad thing.

Hmm..
Perhaps, we should consider repeating this experiment, with exactly the same people, and similar structure phrases(different meaning of course), but in reversed order.

Hey, we haven't even finished this one and you're already making plans!

Yes, it's just before Swedish, the last link in the chain. Also, the first translation was Spanish, because I wanted to do my part, and I didn't want to leave Crazy Photon out. Of course, doing the first translation wasn't biased at all.

Since we're pretty much at half in the event, I suppose there would be no problem in posting just the order of the translations? (If 2 people confirm this, I will)

Erm. I doubt it any matters, especially for non-professional interpreters, but it would hurt the purity of experiment a bit

Good point. We'll stay as clean as possible for the moment then. (But anyone could make a draft of it anyway just seeing the languages list and the alphabet)

I guess Oscar will do that part, then.

EDIT: Isn't Swedish -> English the last link?

Spanish --> English --> Swedish --> English

The "last link in the chain" part goes for swedish, maybe the comma shouldn't be there.

I'm not sure I follow, isn't the order of the translations alphabetical?

You either use your head and make the list yourself, or I post it here for your visual pleasures.

I made a first draft of my translation just now. I will take another look at it in half an hour before finalising it.

If you will survive it till then.

Good news people! (Don't explode type568)

Both Marco Radaelli and FMC are joining in to the translation chain! The more the better! Marco has confirmed me this via PM.

They'll be put in the end of the chain, so the order for any of you doesn't change at all. The last one will just have to send them to Marco additionally.

The problem was that FMC didn't have another italian translator to join in. He proposed that Marco participated too, and so, I'm giving him the possibility to participate in the experiment as well.

That increases the number of translations to 18. Nice!

Sweet. Science progresses!

I sent of my translation just now. I struggled with how much I should transliterate and how much I should reinterpretate. Now I'm very curious how close I was to the original version

Great, Slartibartfast, you're next. Will you have any problems with sending Hebrew messages via PM?

אָלֶף-בֵּית עִבְרִי

The forum seems to be ok, so the PM system should be too.

It's damn late here now -.-
& Imma sleep. If you hear breaking news of an uncontrolled nuclear fusion reaction in Israeli central region, you'll know I will never wake up.

Append:
U-235 + Pu-238 @ 10m degrees Celsius..

Translation:

Oh craps, Israel's got da bombs

10m °C = 10m K

@Goalie: I tried to do my best, and I admit to be a lot curious about how you turned them back to English ! I can't wait !

Isn't that fission and not fusion?

He didn't say whose implied bomb it was that exploded in Israel

Anyway, I'm done with my translation, it was fun. I won't specify how well I think I did until the experiment is over, for fear of tainting the results.

I think it's actually somewhat that "three stage detonation", dunno..
Since the temperature of these two is already 10mil, some fission is assumed to take place nearby the same moment.. & is kindeh' supposed to suffice for these guys to start fusing their atoms

However, I've received my 5 sentences & sent'em further so the reaction is postponed for now

Ya.. I was made in the USSR. Although Izrael has got teh bombehs too.. Or so they all say.

Some of us were really close to some unwanted chain reaction..

Iron is at the bottom of the nuclear energy output curve. Elements heavier than iron take more energy to fuse than they output, but yield a net gain for fission, vice versa for elements lighter than iron.

Oh. Aha.
Btw makes sense, thanks...
So the cute nose is right.

The lack of sun is perhaps making my brain working half it should, but I can't see how I would have started a chain reaction.

I am for sure not understanding something there.

Variable group of symptoms occurring before menstruation in 40% of women, severe in about 10% of those....

Hmm.

If you read the thread starting from here.. You may understand what I mean.

Pu-238 isn't fissile, only fissionable. And besides, it's far too rare and valuable for RTG fuel to use in anything else.
</brain damage>

You'll be surprised to know what can be found in a human's mind..

Hell yeah. I am ashamed.

To revive my honor I must follow the Norglaw's law and make a human sacrifice. As I don't have a fsking young and nice virgin under the hands, I'll use some type568 nuclear-mind powered bomb.

It's just a matter of time, and I'll find that fscking lost bag with the beloved red button inside.

If another experiment is to come soon, the risks of an "unexpected" detonation will rise again.. I think you're running out of time, hurry..

Fear my next weapon:

One capable to detonate himself, fear shall not.

This thread is so under surveillance by the CIA by now...

Hell yeah. They also have a hand on everything in your life. They even give you a unique id.

If they read me, good, they really have time under their hands for such an insignificant thing I am

Don't think these words will make you any safer.

Mind what, I don't care about the CIA.

** Cheers Oscar so that he can make his translations **

Hah, wanna test me?

Ok, 2 more translations are in. 6 More and this will be finished.

Actually, kenmasters1976 is the next one to make the translations from English to Spanish.

BTW, what did I miss about you people being investigated by the CIA in turning this experiment to a nuclear weapon?

All jokes around type568 mumbling about exploding in a nuclear reaction...

EDIT: Go Ken!

Jokes ahhah.. Funny guy.

Watch it, you might get kidnapped if your brain has such powers. Don't go into Battle.NET!

Battle.NET sux. I prefer Garena, and I'm astonished by the number of Koreans in European Starcraft rooms..

Btw, you're right.. I should be careful there..

I just log in. I'll be sending my translations soon™.

Well, if those were not jokes, I apologize then, and recommend you move out of there before it happens.

Thank you sir, I shall be on my way. Would you be so kind to pick a target for me, please?

Well, if you need to select a target for where you will detonate, than I suggest Tehran

Good question. I would say my country (Uruguay) as it has few to none natural disasters, has friendly neighbors, nice beaches and has low crime rates compared to the rest of the subcontinent (although higher than over there, perhaps). On the other hand, people are sometimes too complacent and don't want to work as much as other cultures while demanding better pay. Moreover, it does not have much variety in entertainment options, though you can go to Buenos Aires once in a while if you are into that...

I think he meant a target place for him to move. If he meant what you say, I say make love, not war.

I'm an Israeli citizen, I can not visit an "enemy" country. And you know it. Besides, I'd prefer something local.. Not too far, some place that I'm either already in, or.. Someplace I'll be at, in near future. Some target in Russia would also do..

Although, if I get some.. Decent arguments, the target maybe anywhere I can get visa to.

Append:
Just name the place.

Append:

Well, the economy overall looks quite in poor condition, so it's no wonder they wanna betteh pay.

Btw, I never heard of that country.. Erm.. Why would I wanna go there?

Append:
Oh, south America..

Phew... for a moment I thought I missed completely on the translation task.

^[1]

Was a little flower...

Append: But why Uruguay?

Small peaceful country.. Maybe pick up something more aggressive? U.S? Also I'd like to visit U.S..
Maybe also Israel, it's close.. Or Iran, as my sweet nose suggested, even though visiting Iran would be a crime.

I could never emigrate from Israel, I wouldn't last long without good food (And of course there's something to be said for hot beaches and chicks )

Finally my turn! It was a long wait Next time order the languages by name in the native language (Español instead of Spanish ).

Sounds like we need to understand your motivations / desires better. What kind of place would you like? and what kind of life would you like? those are aspects that need to be taken into account while choosing where to move.

EDIT:

Buena suerte! (good luck!)

What's this about targets? The English seems to have degraded in this thread because I've had a hard time following the whole nuclear disaster conversation...

Well, while you would normally translate יעד as destination, it might also be translated as target. (which is usually מטרה)

I had to look in a dictionary the meaning of a word of the second sentence to make sure it means what I though, we don't use that word here
And I'm having some trouble with the last sentence, but I think I almost have it. I'll probably wait 10-15 minutes after I finish and check my translations before sending them.

I just skipped all that :X

Crazy Photon, don't bring the Nuclear Bomb here! The USA will come and conquer us anyway when they run out of water.

Take your time. You don't want to make any undesired changes in the translations don't you?

EDIT: BTW, the thread is growing really fast because of the nuclear minded argument.

Yeah, no kidding.

Yes, I heard about that a few years back, let's hope for the best, though... (for instance, here the water can only be provided by the state and it is not allowed to export it). Could it be that the Uruguayan - Argentinian conflict around the paper mill is part of the efforts to destabilize the region and make it easier for them?

I wonder how did it get there I had more trouble with the 4th one though.

Wait, what?

The USA is already putting military outposts near the place excusing themselves with the protection against terrorist threats, which is total BS. It's known that we will run out of drinking water in some decades/centuries, and the reserve down here shared between Uruguay/Paraguay/Argentina is enough to satisfy the worldwide needs for another 200 years.

There's the rumor that around 2018 - 2020, drinkable water will be a commodity even more valuable than oil, and that nations will even fight wars for it. The Guaraní Aquifer is the among the largest water reserves in the world, and spans parts of Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and Southern Brazil.

EDIT: Beaten.

EDIT2:

Actions are already being taken to counter this:

• Uruguay has already put a legislation so that water cannot be exported

• Brazil has renewed their tank fleet in Rio Grande do Sul.

Great, Oscar has already done his part. Next is Jonatan Hedborg, doing some Swedish magic.

Ooh, I'm getting "positieve faalangst" while waiting.

^ Nah, that comment doesn't reveal too much. Also, it's fairly known that everyone's hating me because of the 5th sentence.

Why are we running out of drinking water?

Because we are drinking it.

So we all freak out over 2012, but an actual threat to human society goes almost unnoticed?

The drama queens can't troll plain facts.

You'd wish!
Part of the problem is places like Las Vegas, which waste water on a tremendous scale. Las Vegas, to those who don't know, is in a desert.

I think some European countries are already doing regulations regarding the use of water.

EDIT: Also, revelation time Neil?

Yup. Ah well, there's not really much I can do about it. But now I'm thirsty.

According to rumor, we should be out of oil by now, so I wouldn't take rumors so seriously. According to rumor, USA wants to conquer not only Argentina, but the whole world, and the Illuminati are behind all of it!.

Yeah, be careful with what you say, even more if the CIA is monitoring this thread.

I guess I know what word it was... and yet I can't think of another translation for it.

You mean some trouble as in translating it or as in understanding the Spanish version of it?.

In southern Spain there are usually water regulations on Summer if there's not enough raining or it didn't rain much in Winter so that water reserves are low.

[edit]

I think it's not the word you think. It's the last word of the sentence.

as in translating, since I'm not 100% sure how to interpret something.

I always thought that fresh water was a renewable resource. Isn't there a water cycle? Doesn't the water that we use end up evaporating back into the air? Plus water evaporating in the oceans and being rained down over land.

Lots of the water the USA uses comes from reservoirs deep underground that surface water takes thousands of years to filter down to.

DVN? L'VU SBPZ KEHR TVZHE JWB CUUESU TCNUTUU :Q
ZGW!

This GAME, would be fun using ALLEGRO...
http://rumkin.com/tools/cipher/vigenere-keyed.php

Translate that

I've wondered why a binary blob of PI wouldn't suffice as a passkey. Simply supply the offset to the beginning of the phrase and use as many bytes as the message was long. How long would it take somebody so incompetent they had to settle for a government job to figure it out?

Without knowing much about this whole water thing, what stops everyone from desalinating sea water and drinking that?
Well, aside from countries with no ocean access, but they can buy some from their neighbours.

Hell yes.

& now, overall.. Out of what I see here, the obvious target for my visit is the U.S. As a person of, urm. "High moral values", I wanna stop teh evil big bad thing.. Now the question is what exactly should I visit there:

N.Y(U.S. financial capital), or.. Washington D.C.

Aaand.. I guess I should reduce the amount of air I breath, and to start adapting to lighter gases.

P.S.
Alternative target suggestions are still welcome.

It takes lots and lots of energy (and/or time) to desalinate water, and you'd still have to transport it thousands of kilometers in some cases.

Visit Langley, Virginia. They'll put you up in a nice undergruund padded cell...

Yes to all of those.
The reason that doesn't help is the same reason that erosion hasn't broken down all major cities on Earth yet: it takes a while for those processes to operate. The rate at which we use (some) resources is faster than the rate at which they are replenished by nature.

In a sense, even oil is a renewable resource: it comes from organic matter, after all. Problem is, it took hundereds of millions of years to build up the oil reserves we have now. The rate at which we use it is (much) higher than the rate at which it is renewed. Same problem as with fresh water, although the timescale for the oil to be renewed is much longer than the timescale for water to be renewed. Then again, we can survive without oil, but we can hardly survive without water.

We don't have efficient technology to do that yet. That may change if the prototype nanotube purifiers being made can be scaled up.

I'd say the main reason that the US is running short of drinkable water is mostly pollution. Too many cities dump toxic crap into rivers UPSTREAM of other towns and cities. It can take a lot to clean that crap out of the water. And expensive too.

For a long time the North Saskatchewan river here was horribly polluted. Its been getting a lot better though. To the point that they don't need to use as many chemicals to clean it anymore. Still aren't supposed to swim in the river though so its not clean yet.

Then they are not nanotubes anymore.

Sure they are, theres just more of them.

Then it's not scaling.

Just in case, this is the article that explains a bit about the technology.

Let me clarify: I mean scaling up as in vertical scalability, that is, instead of having a single nanotube, have an array of them. They also need to figure out how to cheaply build them as well, as well as adapting the process to industrial proportions.

So you cant scale up the amount of things?

Has Jonathan made his translations?

He has. It's Marco's turn.

Great, just 2 more to go.

Oh, and don't bring more attention from the CIA until we finish this, or they'll kidnap me and none of you will see the results.

We promise, Dario bin Laden.

Too late...
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Look what you've done, now the CIA is going to take us all ! ;-)

That's okay.. I work for csis and we already got it covered

My bad..

Seems like there's some delays with Marco. Don't worry though people, if for some reason he has some problems(cough, real life), the deadline is Sunday's night. Or so I hope, I want to get this out of the door as soon as possible.

All I can say for the patient, is that the wait was worth it. The results are pretty interesting, and it'll change your view on Human/Computer translators surely.

Okay dario, you're promising all this stuff so I expect a paper when this is all done

Can we get the results from the computer translator for the same sentences at the same time as the actual results?
Also, do we get to justify our translation choices?

Yes, I already did the translations by hand using Google Translator using the exact same order. There's still one extra Italian translation I have to do since two translators joined in during the event.

You're free to comment on whatever translation you made when I create the new thread with the results. I'm still wondering if in the translation log, I should put the name of the author at its side.

I hope I didn't promise too much. I'll try to post the results as soon as I get the final translation, and maybe do some analysis later. I think I'll have a pretty busy weekend though, so no extensive documentation of the whole thing for a while. Also, I'm still wondering where should I search for any people interested in the results of this.

. I'm an academic so anytime i do something there is a paper to be written Stil.. I think it would be neat to write up a little report and I'd help in the analysis and writing.

I vote for yes, although..

Indeed.

Right, the path to enlightenment of humanity..

I'm on my last year on hi-school, so anytime I do something there is a copy+paste involved in it.

Just kidding, I'm not that lazy as other people on my course...

You could contact Google and tell them how much their translator sucks (if we made a lot better, that is) and that if they're not careful we could make their Google Translator obsolete.

The Italian translation is in... let's wait for the results!

FMC, Marco forgot to send me the Italian sentences... Would you mind giving them to me? I'll start organising a new thread with the results.

EDIT: Oh, and the new thread will have TranslatorHack 2010 name on it. Just for kicks.

Sent!

Thanks. The results will be up in a few minutes/hours. I'm creating the new thread ATM.