This is a follow-up to the last post, in which I “composed” three poems in some nefarious way.
All of these poems were “written” with the help of Google Translate. I simply took the source material in English, cut-and-pasted into Google Translate and then cycled through 3 others languages before returning to English. The result is just the original poem in English again, but twisted linguistically.
To illustrate the process, let’s take a single sentence from Poe’s “Conqueror Worm”:
And the angels, all haggard and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy “Man,”
Its hero the Conqueror Worm.
Let’s go to German:
Und die Engel, die alle hager und blass,
Aufstand, Enthüllung, bekräftigen
Dass das Spiel der Tragödie ist “Mensch”
Sein Held, der Eroberer Wurm.
And now to Turkish:
Ve melekler, tüm bitkin ve solgun,
Ayaklanma, meydana çıkarma, teyit
Oyun trajedi “Adam” olduğunu
Onun kahraman, Fatih Worm.
And then to Greek:
Και οι άγγελοι , όλοι εξαντληθεί και χλωμό ,
Εξέγερση , αποκαλυπτήρια , επιβεβαίωσε
Τραγωδία παιχνίδι ” Man” είναι
Ήρωά του , Πορθητή Worm.
Finally we get back to English:
And the angels, all exhausted and pale,
Uprising, unveiling confirmed
Tragedy “Man” game is
Hero, Conqueror Worm.
This particular stanza is not much worse for the wear. The only editorial choices I made were what languages to phase into, along with a bit of cleaning-up of the punctuation. The process is much like the “telephone game” (“Chinese whispers” in other countries) where a phrase gets distorted gradually, like a Philip Glass melody, until it no longer resembles the original in any way.
I’d be interested to see other people’s attempts at Google Translate poetry.
Many Worlds Theory 
What a terrific example of the phone game, what we in Australia call Chinese Whispers.
Can we do this with 1st Century Hebrew, to Koptic Greek, then to Latin, and finally to English?
Interestingly, if you take Trump’s standard stump speech, and go 1st Century Hebrew–>Koptic Greek–> Latin–>English, you get the Book of Revelation KJV.
Bwahahaha! I can smell a NYT’s OpEd in there somewhere.
Ha – I should really have recognized that 🙂
My Christmas post 2014 was Google Translate Poetry. I ran poems from English to English through another 9 languages. In addition, the original, weird ‘poem’ had already been created by an experimental method – started by Google image searching experimental images created by a visual artist (by overlaying various Google searched images):
https://elkement.wordpress.com/2014/12/22/google-translational-poetry-austrian-christmas-edition/
Oh I missed that! Great minds think alike, apparently.
This is where I got the inspiration from originally – I think it should be to your liking, too: Running Deepak Chopra’s statement through Google Translate 10 times:
“Translational Metaphysics”
http://alexanderbrown.info/2013/01/15/translational-metaphysics/
From Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Bells”
Hear the loud alaurm bells, brazen bells,
What a tale of terror now their turbulency tells.
After Arabic, Spanish, Danish and back to English:
Alarum hear loud bells, bells bitch,
What horror story now says turbulence
And it gets much worse:
Coleridge’s Rime:
‘Day after day, day after day, we struck nor breath nor motion,
As idle as a painted ship, upon a painted ocean.’
Danish to Korean to Latin and back home:
And every day, from day to day, and smote him, and the spirit of the motion can also be
Vana ocean much time off.
And laying his finger aside of his nose
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprung to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle:
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight —
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Through Hebrew to Arabic and Esperanto:
And put his finger aside of his nose
And it gives the signal, even smoked Almighty.
He jumps to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
Everyone fled as thistle down;
But heard about it is true, before he drove out of sight –
Holiday Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
He even smoked Almighty. Ha!
Guia-me a Só a Razão
Guia-me a só a razão.
Não me deram mais guia.
Alumia-me em vão?
Só ela me alumia.
Tivesse quem criou
O mundo desejado
Que eu fosse outro que sou,
Ter-me-ia outro criado.
Deu-me olhos para ver.
Olho, vejo, acredito.
Como ousarei dizer:
«Cego, fora eu bendito» ?
Como olhar, a razão
Deus me deu, para ver
Para além da visão —
Olhar de conhecer.
Se ver é enganar-me,
Pensar um descaminho,
Não sei. Deus os quis dar-me
Por verdade e caminho.
Fernando Pessoa, in “Cancioneiro”
*through
Hi, I was hoping this page was a representation of a conundrum I’ve been battling within my brain, the “many world” theory pertaining to worlds beyond science and visible universe, yet I only find random strands of the very limited view of physics. To me, the “many worlds” exist first in the universe, then in the so named multiverse, whereas the worlds are divided upon each decision made by the human who made the decision, multiplying that to a difficult to calculate number of worlds, and finally progressing into the worlds of imagination and the writer’s continuum.
If you are not familiar with the last two, I’d love to tell you more about them.
An imagination can create a world, a universe, or perhaps a sampler of the “many worlds” in itself. That is the beauty of an imaginary existence, it retains form until given medium. One such medium is writing, opening a path into the writer’s continuum.
The writer’s continuum is just one medium, but it extends into written, and writer. Who is to say this world, the one contemplating this idea isn’t a single character of a story? On the other hand this could be the top form of writer, perceived as god to all he/she writes, thus forever continuing in both directions.
That, to me, is the true meaning of the many worlds theory. I apologize if I rambled on a bit. Hope your brain did not explode from the infinite iterations of infinity.
for me imagination is the way your mind writes something about what you see and what you might see in his own knowledgeable language. The understanding provided about the analogical reasoning of each word as a musical note. 7 singular notes can provide an outsanding number of combinations the art is about one can maneuver through the combinations while listening or you can see it as the creator the one who made the combinations to himself listen and share is own created world to others themselves listen so if fernando pessoa shared this piece of poetry to the world and beatifully i can read it to myself without fear… no need to fear it just taste it.. as it. p.s. : Sorry Fernando Pessoa I Would Like To Borrow You The Poetry But I Forgot To ask. Respectfully… He born this day might be his friend… who knows.
I want see Whole Movie of New ray star wars
Movie Full serial and A lot of fun GordonHom
Is Lukes sky walker from future