Fun with Google

[joywitch_m_curmudgeon]

Ok, here's the background:  The Washington Post, my local daily 
newspaper (of which I am very fond), has a section called "Style" 
which contains movie, tv, and theatre listings and reviews, and also 
all sorts of off-beat, odd, and usually sarcastic articles.  And, 
they have a weekly contest.  This week's contest is to take a short 
English quotation, plug it into any one of the 5 languages in 
Google's translator, then take the resulting quote and translate it 
from that language back into English.  The aim is to find an 
interestingly-mutated quote.

So, I took the quote:

"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to 
say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

and translated it into each of the 5 languages, and then translated 
it back, and here's what I got:

******************************************

English-Spanish-English
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, impulsion of Privet, were proud 
to say that they were perfectly normal, thank for much to him.

English-French-English
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of the number four, ordering of Privet, were 
proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

English-Italian-English
Sig. and sig.ra the Dursley, of number four, drive of Privet, was 
fairs to say that they were perfectly normal, them ringraziano a lot.

English-Portuguese-English
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, movement of Privet, were proud 
to say that he was perfectly normal, thank it very very.

English-German-English
Gentleman and Mrs Dursley, of No. four, drive Privet, were to be said 
proud, that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

*******************

My favorite is the Italian.  I suspect that the Italian translation 
program was written by Chico Marx.

Anyway, it's a lot of fun.  If you want to watch Google mangle your 
favorite quotation, just go to www.google.com, and choose "language 
tools."

--Joywitch