Wednesday, 27 January 2016

Here's a game I play when completely bored – usually when I'm in the waiting room at the doctors or dentists – I write a sentence, translate it with an online translator, then another with a different language and so on, until I've circumnavigated the globe and arrived back in good old English ...
This :
The result is never the same as the original, and frequently isn't even similar to the original sentence.
became :
The residue is nowhere indefinable as the first, and often carries no level resemblance to the primary imprisonment.

Digital translation shouldn't be relied on, especially translating from English into another language, because English is notorious for having many words meaning the same thing or the same word having several different meanings. 

What do we mean when we say mean?
Do we mean average, spiteful or signify?
Shabby perhaps, skilful or poor?