Sometimes when debugging a program, it’s instructive to see the internal processes by which input data is transformed into output. The Bad Translator site allows you to copy all the intermediate translations. Here is the limerick I most recently tried:
There was a young rector of Kings
Whose mind was on heavenly things,
But his heart was on fire
For a boy in the choir
Whose ass was like jelly on springs.
Some of the internal translations are interesting. The reference to the “young rector of Kings” turns into “Wang, a young pastor” because “Kings” is translated into the proper name “Wang” when the sentence is translated from English to traditional Chinese. The word “ass” is translated into Chinese and then back into English as “butt”.
After a few translations into Croatian, Danish, and Dutch we get the English: Wang, a young pastor, life in heaven, but my heart is like spring burning butt jelly babies heart..
Once we get to German, we have “jelly babies” translated into “Gummi Bear”, and somehow the game of Lacrosse got into it: Wang, a young priest, life is heaven, but my heart is like a feather, burns in the heart of the Gummi Bear Lacrosse.
After an excursion to Iceland, we have: Wang, a young priest to life in heaven, but my heart is like straw and burned to Feed RSS Bears Lacrosse.
Unfortunately, once we get to Japan the last few words are replaced by what seems to be a phonetic translation of “Bears Lacrosse” and which is not further translateable. And the final one is pretty much gibberish. But, it is all good fun.
The cut doesn’t seem to work, so instead of giving you the entire thing, I’ll just delete it as it would be tiresome to show it all. The last and final translation is: T space. King, the young monk who is the head of a horse, grass and fodder Beazurakurosu live.
I thought I’d try an old folk song we sang in college:
She’s like the swallow that flies so high,
She’s like the river that never runs dry.
(The tenor part left out many of the words, and was often rendered “She likes to swallow the river that never runs dry.”)
And got back:
It’s like flying high, not dry swallow.