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Computer: Translation: Partial
Untranslator   (+2)  [vote for, against]
ruminations on The Lunchroom of the Pharaoh's Slaves

While watching a popsci documentary on muon detection in archaeology, I notice that one of the scientists/team-members wears a t-shirt, the front adorned solely by the words

"Garden Railway of My Favorite City".

Obviously, a rather clever bit of humour, and any local pointing a cameraphone at the English nonsense phrase receives a translation, entirely sensible in their own language due to vagaries and shortcomings in iTranslate. Wonderful. Oh how I laughed, having solved the mystery.

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Somehwat unrelatedly, proposed is a program/app that uses insider-level knowledge of common translation program algorithms to accurately deconstruct a machine-translation back to its input text.

Simply cut'n'paste the offending phrase into the "Wotchutalkin'boutWillis" untranslator app and get back either the original text, or another translation attempt - this time by the user's choice from more sophisticated translation programs/versions.

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Spoiler#1 : they found a new Great Pyramid chamber "the size of a 200 passenger aircraft", which linguistic practise begs repeated smacks upside the head, delivered appropriately.

Spoiler#2 : applying some google-fu, the back of the tee probably says "The High Line, NYC"

Spoiler#3: catchphrase in a vintage TV sitcom.
-- FlyingToaster, Jan 25 2018

Anything to do with this? https://www.urbande...an-decay/UD714.html
[pashute, Jan 25 2018]

Actually, this... http://www.pbs.org/...-the-great-pyramid/
[FlyingToaster, Jan 25 2018]

and this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Line
[FlyingToaster, Jan 25 2018]

How did high become garden. Something to do with Arabic or French?
-- pashute, Jan 25 2018


It would be pointlessly cruel, demeaning, humiliating and gratuitously offensive to make fun of you simply because of your slightly imperfect command of English idiom, [pash].

Hahahahaha, what an idiot ...! Durrrr ....
-- 8th of 7, Jan 25 2018


Stop sniggering 8th, you didn't get it, either.

It looked perfectly reasonable at 4 am when it was posted.
-- FlyingToaster, Jan 25 2018


I still don’t get it...
-- RayfordSteele, Jan 25 2018


Semantic mappings between natural languages tend not to be bijective. Therefore your inside knowledge of the algorithm might tell you that, in a given context, both A and B map to X. So, given X in the output language, you can't reconstruct whether A or B was used in the input language.

Besides, for the example quoted, what's needed is not insider knowledge of algorithms but, rather, knowledge about New York, and what's hip this week.
-- pertinax, Jan 25 2018



random, halfbakery