week 13 BONUS ENTRY: a behind-the-scenes look at failure... always-inevitable failure

[acalculatedname]

Originally, I had a different plan for my Week 13 entry, but I quickly figured out that it would get too weird and/or would not have the desired result.

Comments

[witches]

I love what you did here! 8D <3

[acalculatedname]

Your snippet was one of the least affected, which I found interesting. I wonder if we'll someday judge the "quality" of writing by how well it successfully survives translation engines.

Also, did you know your stylesheet somehow stymies Firefox from copy/pasting content, probably with some Javascript voodoo? Had to type it in for my little exercise manually. I didn't know they could do that on the Livejournalz.

[witches]

Your snippet was one of the least affected, which I found interesting. I wonder if we'll someday judge the "quality" of writing by how well it successfully survives translation engines.
<- could be because I went for a very simplistic style!

NICE TRY STYLESHEET PEOPLE. But now I feel angry for having manually typed 25 words or whatever. <- XDDD

[acalculatedname]

I stand corrected - your stylesheet doesn't PREVENT copy/pasta, it simply makes the text-block highlighting invisible. NICE TRY STYLESHEET PEOPLE. But now I feel angry for having manually typed 25 words or whatever.

[halfshellvenus]

Mine wasn't too badly mangled, though it's interesting that there was an implied gender switch in changing from 'wallet' to 'purse.'

I'm surprised at your former student. Not that she was a ruthless plagiarizer (I think you've written about her before), but that she would expect a coherent enough result from translate-in/translate-out that she would just submit that! I still think fondly of a record album owned by the first radio station where I worked, that suffered from this effect. The music was described as the suite from Bartok's "The Wonderful Tangerine," because the in-out translator did not realize that the Mandarin in the original title was a Chinese person and not a piece of fruit. :O

I went to the pond, leaving close enough to my swing. He followed me lost.
This one is my favorite. Completely surreal!

[acalculatedname]

I follow at least two different language-destroying bots on Twitter (the JanusNode "official" account and the justifiably infamous @horse_ebooks). So, maybe, I'm a bit of a connoisseur. Yours actually had an unusually high proportion of mangle-gold. "the fact that two Canadians and southern borders are usually tolerated" - I love this with AND without the following "dollars in cash."

Yeah, I've mentioned this same story before. I couldn't remember if it was in a comment section or an entry, but it matters not (certainly not now). "The Wonderful Tangerine" is absolutely wonderful. Right up there with the famous Yamaha electric-piano manual from the late 60s that clearly instructs the user to "fuck the legs into the base."

[halfshellvenus]

I follow at least two different language-destroying bots
That sounds INCREDIBLY tempting!

the fact that two Canadians and southern borders are usually tolerated
It's true, that is not at all what the original said. Only two Canadians? And southern borders? And they are tolerated rather than being tolerANT?

This is the problem of reading your own selection. Since that's last week's entry, I know what it should say, and it's messing with the recognition of what the translation actually does say.

[acalculatedname]

Yeah, good point. I was the only one not subjected to the head-asplode, so I hadn't thought about that.

My overall favorite is definitely what became of porn_this_way's snippet of genius in multi-translation.

[anyonesghost]

That's happened to me as well, with a few students. (Of sorts. I do computer science "guest lectures," as it were, and programs aren't quite as individual as essays.) It roils the blood.

And, y'know, I didn't think there was a way to make my writing any more nonsensical, but I should have realized we in fact have the technology. ;-)

[acalculatedname]

I hate to say this, as a guy who really DOES want to get into programming seriously, but... the only plagiarism I attempted at *any* point in my studies was in a C++ course I took during a particularly horrible junior year.

In my defense, my entire life was crumbling around me (or so I believed at the time), the professor was an adjunct who had mastery of neither the pedagogical arts nor the English language, and he'd decided we didn't need a textbook either.

As for language-mangling - you may well have no idea what technology we possess. I went off on some of this to HSV above. Anyway, yes, it's wonderful. I used to feed 20 pages of personal emails or whatever through Babelfish, pull out the best resulting phrases, and arrange the cream-snippets like magnetic poetry to make lyrics. It's a great way to write something "meaningful" without anyone else having a clue what the hell you're talking about.

[alycewilson]

LOL I think the solution you chose was better, although I love to introduce random elements into the creative process, as well.

Are you a fan of Dada?

[acalculatedname]

I can't say that the route I chose was better, but it was certainly the only route that stood any chance of being understood well enough to possibly let me survive another round. That's the problem with the nature of the game - y'can't ever get quite as weird as you'd like. Or I can't, anyway.

And on that note, I'm not deeply entrenched in Dadaist whatever, but there are so many things that have been huge influences that are clearly connected (the philosophical aspect of John Cage, who in turn was deeply influenced by Duchamp, etc.). The Italian Futurists are more interesting in the abstract as sort of a related / contemporaneous movement, but only because they're kind of fascinating as (arguably) the earliest strain of punk aesthetic.

I got really interested in the various Oulipo cats a year or so ago - that's more my style: insane / absurd ideas that have been structured or realized to such an obsessive degree that you can't help but be astounded at their sheer craft in the end. I wish that was me!

[alycewilson]

Thanks for introducing me to Oulipo! Love some of those writing exercises listed in the article you liked to. They're the only ones in your comment I wasn't already familiar with. BTW, if you ever make it to Philly, our art museum has some pretty famous Duchamp works, including "Fountain" and "The Bride Stripped Bare by the Bachelors." Check first, though, to find out if it's currently on display; they tend to rotate the Modern art.

Perhaps it's because I tend to have a very analytical mind, but I get a lot out of techniques that help me get into a "zen" mindset.

Another thing that helps is getting out of the house, because then I'm exposed to a variety of unanticipated stimuli.

[acalculatedname]

Yeah, I like things that break me out of my normal way of thinking when working creatively. I figure it's a fairly common thing.

Philly, eh? Weirdly / coincidentally, I have been getting a little interested in Philly life. It's a combination of noticing that Philly has a very healthy chiptune scene (dudes making music with Nintendos, which I enjoy), following all the Dead Milkmen on Twitter (they've never been better!), and wondering what the hell a Philly cheesesteak is really SUPPOSED to taste like.

I've lived a sheltered life. Thanks for the Duchamp / museum heads-up, though. Definitely on the list.