A couple of years ago at my old job as a group of us frittered away the last hours of the night shift, my coworker Lucia, who runs the world’s coolest online book store, entertained us with a fun little trick. She discovered that if you take William Carlos Williams’ famous poem about chickens, “The Red Wheelbarrow,” and use Babelfish to translate from English into a foreign language and back to English, the results are quite amusing. Remembering this just the other day, I decided it would be fun to share this game with you:
The original:
So much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
English –> Dutch –> English:
This way much hang from a red wheel wheelbarrow vitrified with rain water beside the white chickens
English –> German –> English:
hangs as much after a red wheel truck off glazed with rain water beside the white chickens
English –> Japanese –> English:
So side of the white chicken where the rainwater and the gloss which depend on the red monocycle can be applied
English –> Portuguese –> English:
thus very it depends in top of a red stand on hand of the wheel vitrified with water on rain to the side of the white hens
English –> Chinese (simp) –> English:
Extremely is decided to a red wheel handcart to enamels with the rain water nearby the white chicken
And finally… my favorite: English –> Korean –> English:
Lapse in the rain adjacent waters which depends in the deep-red wheel grave the wheel me in the side of the white chicken