23 October 2009

With My Friendship For This Reason

Great gems sometimes drop into my lap, like this letter that arrived in my office yesterday, from an autograph seeker in Spain (seeking someone else's autograph, not mine).

It reads as though it was badly translated by a robot, so to amuse myself, I stuck it into Babelfish and translated it from English to Italian and back again. Herewith:

Me a lot and series a great relative honor that has the company/companies and that it designs nell' accumulation of the artists of the dance, thus attached he it corresponding paper so that I pray me that it compliments. Un' illustration its has dedicated un' image to me. Thanks a lot for that reason and to attend its news much pleasant he salutes with my friendship.

You could do it all day long, like some demented electronic game of Telephone. I did wend my way through to German, back to English, to Russian, back to English again.

With thanks are much its pleasant communications themselves in order to ensure much [gostepriimsva] it with my friendship for this reason i.

With my friendship for this reason. It's the found poetry at the end of the exercise.

16 comments:

heidi said...

I would respond by saying that I would be pleased to greet him with Friendship In My Pants. :-)

Anonymous said...

I would enjoy that too much. I'm not even going to click over there. I'm not.

Bee said...

Kind of like an online version of multilingual "whispers."

mayberry said...

You should send the photo along with some pigeon gallbladder recipes.

painted maypole said...

ha ha ha ha ha

Gwen said...

Cumpliments? Hmmm. What are those related to?

MARY G said...

I adore that back and forth translator thingy. Try it with the first line of the Canadian National Anthem.
What are you going to do with the request?

shrink on the couch said...

Reminds me of an email found in my spam box - asking if I wanted hard concrete in my pants.

Very Mary said...

You simply must check out Annie Dillard - she is the Queen of found poetry!

meno said...

That you knew that was asking for an autograph proves you speak fluent babble.

Maggie May said...

Its like a Chinese whisper! Probably end up nothing like the original.
I was attracted here by your name! Glad I came.

Nuts in May

S said...

heh. that's great. & cumpliments. (shaking head)

Cynthia said...

OMG...Babelfish...hello time vortex!

Kirsetin Morello said...

I am mighty impressed by your efforts...and his (or hers)! Ahhh, the poetry. Also, I like Heidi's idea, above. :)

coldspaghetti said...

Love using Babblefish JUST for that reason.

Such a cool post, too.

Kyla said...

Ha! Stuff like that cracks me up.