Fun is right! And have you tried InterTran yet? I learned there that Georg
Kaiser (aka George Emperor) had a doughnut house which became a meeting
place for literati, including one Bertolt Breakout and a German
Expressionist named Alfred Wolf Stone (1888-1945), in whom--along with his
one-time wife, poet Henriette Hard Mountain (1894-1993)--I've become quite
interested. She was born into "a plain Jewish doughnut," I gather (what is
it with German Expressionists and the deep-fried pastry anyway?), and
there's very little work by either one in English (or in German, in Hard
Mountain's case, going by the laments of some critics--Marina Beer Mug, for
one--over her poetry's relegation to "peewee publications"), so I've been
running the few online poems of theirs I've found through Babelfish and
InterTrans with variously hilarious results.

Here, for instance, is the first stanza of what must be Alfred's most famous
poem in Germany, given how many websites it's posted on, followed by the
Babelfish and InterTrans renditions:

Staedter

Dicht wie die Loecher eines Siebes stehn
Fenster beieinander, drangend fassen
Haeuser sich so dicht an, dass die Strassen
Grau geschwollen wie Gewurgte stehn.

Staedter

Close like the holes of a filter stehn
Windows together, urgent seize
houses itself so closely on that the roads
Grey swollen like choking stehn.

[I can't figure out why Babelfish left "stehn" untranslated.]

Town Dweller

Dense how the holes a sieves sustaining
Window together, clustering grasp
Houses himself so close to, that the streets
Grey swollen how [Gewurgte] sustaining.


Now here's the second and last stanza of Henriette's "Lied," with which
Babelfish clearly did better, apart from the introduction of "seat-backs" to
this lyrical lyric:

Ich liebe dich, meine Frau,
Meine Haende gehen wie sanfte Tiere in dir,
Lehnen sich an und nuhen sich aus.
Du laechelst weit.
Die heisse Sonne hat dich in ihren Schoss genommen.
Du steigst.

I love you, my wife,
My hands go like gentle animals in you,
Seat-backs on and rest themselves.
You smile far.
The hot sun took you into its lap.
You rise.

The following InterTrans version has what I discovered to be its tendency to
translate "aus" as "outfield" regardless of the context (InterTrans is big
on doughnuts too), but what amazed me here was the "you"-to-"thee" shift (is
this a _pretentious_ translation generator?!):

Self love thee, mine Mrs.,
Mine hands go how soft animals in to you,
Arms himself at and rests himself outfield.
You smile wide.
The am called sun has thee in her lap taken.
You steal.

InterTrans also likes to translate "Frau" as "Mrs.," and one of the blurbs
on a German publisher's webpage that included other authors besides
Wolfenstein and Hardenberg was for Germaine Greer's latest book, _The Whole
Mrs._. Also featured there was an excerpt from the German translation of an
Anne Sexton collection, _The Reverent Row There To God_ (a particular
favorite of Andrew Burke's, I believe). Here's how InterTrans rendered the
first stanza of the excerpted poem:

God dodged to me,
When [verdorrte] the sea how sandpaper,
When dignity the sun to a latrine.
God dodged think finger.
She became to stone.
My womb became to the [Hammelseite],
And despair ambulated in the slaughterhouse about.
("The Illness to the Deaths")

I should add, in fairness to InterTrans, that you can click on an arrow that
follows almost every translated word so as to generate alternatives, but
this to me is as much work as using a dictionary--

Candice






> I regret that I resorted to Babelfish, the translatron, in the first
> instance because I don't speak Italian. It's a lot of fun, though (and also
> of course takes its name from another conceit of Douglas Adams'...)
>
> - Dom
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Martin J. Walker" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 12:13 PM
> Subject: Re: Where is Dominique?
>
>
>> That poem has your usual grave hilarity, Dominic (-que?) I understand it
> as
>> a "delirious" reflection on the theme of self and other mediated by
>> "computer language" (I suppose that was a translation machine you used for
>> the hilariously grave transfer from the Italian), a reflection of some of
>> the preoccupations of this list ("our gold shipment of beloved argument"~
>> pretty specious!) & one's (vain?) longing for "constants" ~ which may be
>> death, "the rest" pressing  its point after the "delirious" dance of the
> da
>> Da da dah rhythm commencing with "parameters". I wish I knew what the sign
>> after "main" means.
>> Martin