Join the new world

Do any of you remember when you were kids playing the game Telephone? One person would come up with a short phrase or sentence and whisper it quickly to the next kid in the circle who would pass it on until it came back to the original person, often uninteligable and horribly mutilated. It was fun (back when I was 7, of course) and often resulted in some pretty good laughs…

Recently, to fulfill my ambassador position to eRomania and to some extent in eAustria,(although everybody I've talked to has spoken English fluently) I’ve been using Google translate a lot. To test how efficient this tool was, and really just have a bit of fun, I decided to run my winning entry for the New Citizens Writing Contest through every single language supported by Google translate in Alphabetical order(except for English), and then back to English to see what I got. Just like telephone, except on an international scale.

This would mean translating from English to Afrikaans, to Albanian, to Arabic, to Armenian, to Azerbaijani, to Basque, to Belarusian, to Bulgarian, to Catalan, to Chinese(simplified), to Chinese(traditional), to Croatian, to Czech, to Danish, to Dutch, to Estonian, to Filipino, to Finnish, to French, to Galician, to Georgian, to German, to Greek, to Haitian Creole, to Hebrew, to Hindi, to Hungarian, to Icelandic, to Indonesian, to Irish, to Italian, to Japanese, to Korean, to Latvian, to Lithuanian, to Macedonian, to Malay, to Maltese, to Norwegian, to Persian, to Polish, to Portuguese, to Romanian, to Russian, to Serbian, to Slovak, to Slovenian, to Spanish, to Swahili, to Swedish, to Thai, Turkish, to Ukrainian, to Urdu, to Vietnamese, to Welsh, to Yiddish and FINALLY back to English.

Not including English, that’s 56 unique languages from around the globe.

Here’s my original text:
"I stood at the end of the long wooden pier in Dublin's Harbor, the wind wrapping around me, gulls and other seabirds crying overhead. The dark, Irish Sea, stretched out before me. I smiled slightly at the name. It isn’t the English sea, no, they can have their own bloody channel, but our sea, god’s gift to the Irish people to protect us from the damned redcoats.
Thick mist swirled around the harbor, limiting my vision to hardly a kilometer, but I knew across the vast churning stretch of water lay the Island of Eng. However foreboding, though, the accursed isle of inbreds was not my current worry. The British taint was much closer, on our home soil, poisoning the motherland. I consoled myself that at least they were limited to such, and Ireland stood independent. Still, the redcoats had abused us, starved us, and stuck their pale arses in our faces for far too long. This was my homeland, and my duty as an Irish citizen to defend it and liberate it. Fully.
I turned around, slowly walking back down the pier, feeling the sea breeze at my back. Varieties of colorful posters fluttered in the chilling wind. Bright red ones for Labour, the IFP’s variety of colorful adds, the rustic leaflets of Clann na nGael’s Right-Wing Extremist campaign, and the Irish Social Democrats “One Nation, One Future” Slogans, all pasted, often overlapping, on the low stone wall besides the waterway. It seemed a lot of political activity was going on in Ireland, and I wondered if I could become part of it. Perhaps I would run for Congress some day, I don’t think it would be too challenging. My party, the Irish Social Democrats, was also fairly young and small, with plenty of room for advancement in it.
I made my way back to my apartment (for I could not yet afford a house) and sat down on my couch with my laptop. I turned it on and opened my browser. The registration fee for a newspaper wasn’t cheap, but I did have some money, enough to start my own newspaper. I didn’t plan to have daily articles, or even particularly frequent articles, but I at least wanted a chance for my voice to be heard. That done, I closed my computer, washed, and headed for bed. Who knows what a new dawn would bring to eIreland?"

And here’s what I got, translating from Yiddish to English...

Dublin to decide on the Criteria, my license plate, other famous works of God, the English Channel and Irish Sea Irish team of animal ... "Three birds blood was ready to end the game, but ..
Greek ports, water, clouds, water, and I know that the Engineers on the Island. However, Threats or violence, including the Country Islands, but the Mercy Center in Russia, at least the hunger strike, but can be green spain, and quality. To study the safety of Bulgaria.
Ireland a socialist country or hard rock, and river inkata tshvotshman rukka Levi, poster color difference between the economic activities of the members live in such conditions, but the number of Bulgarian government "socialism in Russia recently, maybe ..
Working from home (as we sleep on the special case of newspaper, news readers, and I think the best take.
Eireland Embedded in small regional competition in the modern family. "

... Uh-oh.

~J. Gutenberg

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