When I was thinking of how to attract absurd-lovers from around the world I had one big obstacle to overcome – my ability to communicate in English. My level is good enough to start thinking of an English blog, but poor enough to call myself “a writer”. I thought of a stand-by translator who could have helped me to write this blog’s entries. Yeah. Not possible.
Luckily I’m an absurdist, or at least I pretend to be one. What I write in Polish is more or less absurd. And here the helping hand came from Google Translate Beta. It stroke my mind: why not trying that? This would be in a style I obviously do things (no sense at all), which at the same time is designed to spot things around us, which don’t make sense either, but we don’t know it (some sense).
The simple fact is, that Google translations are going to hugely influence the world communication. To the point nobody would care about bad automatic translations, as they serve one crucial purpose: help you understand what you don’t – quickly and roughly, but extensively enough to get the knowledge you need. This leads to another result: people will accept the GT language world. Reading Google-translations will become another skill, nobody will complain about it. The influence on our lives will be so huge, that inevitably someone somewhere will turn it into a Great Literature Thing. And I will surely be satisfied with pretesting this at GT Beta stage from remote location, Józefina, Poland.
GT fiction – first trial
I have a great short story to start with – “Wishes Shovel Best”. It’s about a SMS service which sends messages containing few accidental words, like “wishes” + “shovel” + “best”. This is a hard test on Google. It would be much easier to translate something, which makes sense into something which doesn’t. But what to do with a story, which doesn’t look to have any sense in a first place?
Below there are three versions of a story. First one is translated by Anna Etmańska. The second one is a single GT from Polish to English (1Google-translated). The next one is a translation from Polish to English, then backwards, and then back again (3Google-translated). Obviously in the near future I’ll try to make next steps into the absurd world of GT fiction. I can imagine 17GT this year.
Human-translated
Wishes Shovel Best
On Christmas Eve Sławek Przekośniak received an SMS with these wishes: “Wishing yo good ping super new”. He didn’t know who sent him that surprisingly enigmatic message. And he doesn’t know to this day. A pity, because thanks to that person he reached his current status and number 67 on the list of the wealthiest Poles.
Back then, during that beautiful, rusty white Christmas Eve night, Przekośniak, who was rudely kicked out from a social network for utopian fanatics of extreme phobias (www.ilovefobia.pl) just a few days earlier, got an idea.
It was a quite good idea too, and the next SMS (“All at cart by unintentionally only honest lamb”) convinced him it was the best idea of his life. »read the rest of the story
1Google-translated
Best wishes spade
Slawek Przekośniak got to wiligię SMS wishes: “I Zycze good ping fajno new. Do not know who sent him this surprisingly enigmatic message. Do not know to this day, and the injury – that the person owes its present status and the first on the list of 67 richest Poles.
Then, in a beautiful white and russet wigilijny evening, Przekośniak, a few days earlier ejected from the site for fanatics utopijnych extreme phobias (www.ilovefobia.pl), came on a concept.
It was a good idea, and the next text message ( “Happy dray accidentally only a sincere lamb”) utwierdził convinced him that it was the idea of life. »read the rest of the story
3Google-translated
Best wishes shovel
Slawek Przekośniak got to wiligię SMS wishes: “I wish you good ping fajno new. I do not know who sent him the surprisingly mysterious message. I do not know to this day, and the damage – that person owes its present status and the first on the list of 67 richest Poles.
Then, in a beautiful white and russet wigilijny evening Przekośniak, a few days earlier ejected from the site for fanatics utopijnych extreme phobias (www.ilovefobia.pl), came on the concept.
It was a good idea, and the following text message ( “Happy dray accidentally only sincere lamb”) utwierdził convinced him that it was the idea to life. »read the rest of the story
Writer Updated 