teaching machines

Playing Telephone with Google Translate

February 10, 2018 by . Filed under public.

A friend was playing with the Google Translate API and wrote a game of Telephone. He started with a message in English, translated it to language X, translated it to language Y, and so on, and finally translated it back to English. Sometimes the end result was incredibly faithful to the original message, but not always.

Since I had other things to work on, I wrote up my own Telephone. I offer a few of the results.

If Oprah runs in 2020, I think she should use this slogan, but it may not translate well.

Wordsworth was aptly named. This quotation of his maintained its integrity.

This one goes wrong at the Japanese translation. Probably because they are much more accommodating of strange electronics.

What began as an ironic expression of human health reversed its sentiment entirely.

This one captures the counterproductivity of praise wonderfully. It is received as a label and contributes to a child’s fixed mindset.

This one is a poem that I call The Sobering of a Teacher.

The internet is dangerous.