in honor of babelfish...

[zelda_pinwheel]

i just saw a babelfish translation from korean to english that made me think of this book, which is so hilarious that you will fall down laughing (really) :

Mark Twain's "The Jumping Frog : In English, then in French, then clawed back into the civilized language once more by patient unremunerated toil", containing the original story (in english), a french translation which was published in la Revue des Deux Mondes and which Twain finds to be a travesty of the original text, and Twain's re-translation of the french back into english, word for word (this is where things degenerate). it is a masterpiece of babelfishien nonsense dating from well before babelfish was even a gleam in the binary code of its creator (1903). best appreciated if you can read both french and english, but even if you skip the french version it's truly brilliant. if you have ever translated random text using babelfish just because it's funny, don't miss this book.

As good old Samuel Clemens himself put it in his foreword "I cannot speak the French language, but I can translate very well, though not fast, I being self-educated."

i don't know whether it's available in digital format ; i checked PG quickly and didn't see it, but it might be in a short story collection. i have a tree-ware edition which was published alone. perhaps if some-one does find it we could add it to the book upload section... i could do the imp format version.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

[B]Mark Twain's "The Jumping Frog : In English, then in French, then clawed back into the civilized language once more by patient unremunerated toil"

i don't know whether it's available in digital format ; i checked PG quickly and didn't see it, but it might be in a short story collection. i have a tree-ware edition which was published alone. perhaps if some-one does find it we could add it to the book upload section... i could do the imp format version.

http://members.cox.net/deleyd/religi...myth/frog.html
______
Dennis

[zelda_pinwheel]

oh, excellent ! thanks ! i will try to make that tomorrow in imp format.

[zelda_pinwheel]

just glancing over the text rapidly i noticed his note at the end :

Such is the Jumping Frog, to the distorted French eye. I claim that I never put together such an odious mixture of bad grammar and delirium tremens in my life. And what has a poor foreigner like me done, to be abused and misrepresented like this? When I say, “ Well, I do’t see no ’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog,” is it kind, is it just, for this Frenchman to try to make it appear that I said, “Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each frog”? I have no heart to write more. I never felt so about anything before.

hee ! poor man, almost makes me want to cry for him, but it would be tears of laughter.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

oh, excellent ! thanks ! i will try to make that tomorrow in imp format.

Incidentally, you might find this of interest:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...088#post146088
______
Dennis

[zelda_pinwheel]

thanks for the link, i will definitely look at that since i have spent all day working on a text with eBook Publisher and it is driving me crazy... however, i don't know anything about Perl so i don't know if i will be able to understand it.

[zelda_pinwheel]

the story is now online..