Monday 10 October 2022

sweded (10. 210)

Via ibīdem, we quite enjoyed this essay from Douglas Hofstadter whose on-again, off-again relationship to the Swedish last came out of its dormancy with his mind, heated from the task of reading exercises, conjuring up Swedish nonsense words, which the author marshalled into a kind of verse, Wacky Jabber, inspired by Lewis Carroll’s experiment. Feeding the stanzas to the top tier, artificially earnest and intelligent—see also here, here and here—to limn the limits of the adage of GIGO (garbage in/garbage out). Compare these three results, from the wholly pseudo-Swedish phrase, “Det var så att säga hultsamt och multsamt, och även ypperligen gnålfritt,” poetically intended as, “It was, so to speak, hultish and multish, indeed—supremishly gnoll-free.”

Google Translate: “It was, so to speak, merry and merry, and also excellently free of whining.”
DeepL: “It was, as it were, hulky and overcast, and also exquisitely whine-free.”

Baidu: “It was so to speak hulled and mulled, and also excellent whining-free.” Twas bryllyg, and ye slythy toves. Much more at the links above.