A few times before on this blog, I've used the Babelfish translator to turn normal passages into gibberish.
Last time I even used it on a review of Mark Steyn's book America Alone.
Now, with a hattip to Steyn himself, take a look at what happens when the Obama story in this blog entry are run through Babelfish into French... then into English.
The original:
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.
The double-translated:
Barack Obama will require you to work. It will require that you throw your cynicism. That you deposited your divisions. That you leave your insulation, that you out of your zones of comfort move. That you push yourselves to be better. And that that you engage. Barack will never enable you to go again to your lives as usual, uninvolved, noninformed.It's almost exactly the same. Why? Because the original passage is pretty much written at a Grade 2 level already? That's surely part of it.
I remain convinced, however, that almost any defense of President-Elect Barak Obama will sound about the same no matter how many times you thrash it through: its going to be senseless prose translated into senseless prose. Just messing up the words isn't going to cause it much harm, since the words don't actually matter anyways.
