Cash-strapped while interrailing in 2009, you can imagine galleries were a top-priority for us lads. On one visit in Venice, I saw a funny exhibit involving Google Translate: the premise was to translate a piece of text from one language to the next, and from that to another, and another... and all the way back around to the first language, basically Google Translate Telephone (or as we used to call it in Ireland, “Chinese Whispers”...).
At the time, Google Translate was significantly more limited than it is now, so indeed this produced terrible but quite funny results. Sadly I don’t recall the artist! In any case, let’s try it right now. We’ll mash together a quote attributed to Oscar Wilde, and also a line of his from The Picture of Dorian Gray.
This is all from Google Translate as of the day of writing. I chose these languages in a somewhat random order (except for starting and ending with English) from the most commonly spoken languages.
English
I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
→ French
Je pense que Dieu, en créant l'homme, a quelque peu surestimé ses capacités. Aujourd'hui, les gens connaissent le prix de tout et la valeur de rien.
I think you get it. If you want, you can see the full chain of translations in the details panel below (again, all from Google Translate, at time of writing).
Details | All languages in between: → Bengali → Spanish → Hindi → Arabic → Indonesian → Chinese → Russian
→ Bengali
আমার মনে হয় ঈশ্বর যখন মানুষকে সৃষ্টি করেছিলেন, তখন তিনি তার ক্ষমতাকে কিছুটা বেশি মূল্যায়ন করেছিলেন। আজ, মানুষ সবকিছুর মূল্য এবং কিছুই না বলে জানে।
→ Spanish
Creo que cuando Dios creó al hombre, sobreestimó un poco sus capacidades. Hoy, el hombre conoce el valor de todo y de nada.
→ Hindi
मेरा मानना है कि जब ईश्वर ने मनुष्य को बनाया था, तो उसने उसकी क्षमताओं को कुछ ज़्यादा ही आँका था। आज, मनुष्य हर चीज़ और किसी भी चीज़ का मूल्य नहीं जानता।
→ Arabic
أعتقد أن الله عندما خلق الإنسان بالغ في تقدير قدراته. اليوم، لا يدرك الإنسان قيمة كل شيء.
→ Indonesian
Saya percaya bahwa ketika Tuhan menciptakan manusia, Dia melebih-lebihkan kemampuannya. Saat ini, manusia tidak menyadari nilai dari segala sesuatu.
→ Chinese (traditional)
我相信上帝創造人類時，高估了他們的能力。如今，人類並沒有意識到一切事物的價值。
→ Russian
Я верю, что, создавая людей, Бог переоценил их способности. Сегодня люди не осознают ценности всего сущего.
→ English (again)
I believe that when God created humans, He overestimated their abilities. Today, people don't understand the value of everything that exists.
Not bad! We’ve kind of lost both lines though. God is now overestimating humans’ ability quite definitively, fully flattening the original, and the second line is now comically literal.
Where did we lose it? The second line changes a lot from French to Bengali (it becomes, back in English “Today, man knows the value of everything and nothing”). The Spanish version doesn’t change much. But when we go to Hindi the first line becomes (in English) “I believe that when God created man, He overestimated his capabilities”. From there, it’s mostly stable until Russian adds the mysterious "that exists" part at the end.
Overall this is significantly better (in retaining the original) than the exhibit from 2009, and that had the advantage of being a longer text, so had more context. Shocker: Google translate has improved in 16 years! Still pretty fun, I bet there are some fun loops out there.
Is it about specific languages having ambiguities, or is it about specific pairings not working well? My guess is the former. I think LLMs would do slightly better than Google translate, but in this case, that’s because they kind of cheat a bit: they know these quotes! Plus, they (in a very loose sense) “check their work” after every word.
Translation Chains, or Asymmetric Translation Paths
I was reminded of the above exhibit and “game”, because I use Google translate (and LLMs, a great use-case) a lot for e.g. sending letters to the French administrative state (always fun). After I write it in English, I don’t always trust that the French translation carries exactly my meaning, so naturally I translate it back to English to check that it seems reasonable. In many cases the resulting English is identical or close to it (Bread → Pain → Bread).
However, a more fun thing to do is to find words that don’t translate back to the same word that generated them. E.g. if you translate “Hello” in English to French, you get « Bonjour », all good. But if you translate this back to English, now you get “Good morning”, not “Hello”. From there the chain terminates, since “Good morning” gives « Bonjour », so it just loops from here.
My question then was: how far can you take this, or what’s the longest chain you can form before a repeat? How many words can you get going from one language to another and back to the first before you see the same word twice?
So far my main trick is to come up with vague, multifunctional words, with lots of different translations possible depending on context (e.g. guère → hardly → à peine → barely (→ à peine)).
Let’s count the chains by number of unique words (in either language). So our Hello → Bonjour → Good Morning (→ Bonjour...) chain is length 3. Any simple words that immediately translate back to what you started with are length 2 (Bread -> Pain -> Bread). And naturally you must take the first translation given by Google (if they give you both genders of a word, just pick one consistently). I try to stick to a starting “word” or at least a term, rather than a phrase (most of the time).
My Longest Chains
I found a few six-chains. A fun one: cheery → gai → cheerful → joyeux → happy → heureux (→ happy, and we loop). And a pretty funny one, gotta be my favourite so far: table → table → tableau → painting → peinture → paint (→ peinture). I really expected this to be a two-chain!
Similarly: d'ailleurs → Besides → En plus → In addition → En outre → Furthermore (→ En outre).
There’s also Du coup → As a result → Par conséquent → Therefore → Donc → So (→ Donc) and à l'égard de → with regard to → en ce qui concerne → Regarding → Concernant → Concerning (→ Concernant), though du coup and à l'égard de are pushing it as starting “words”.
I found multiple long chains that end with Donc and So in some order (Du coup from above gave a six-chain; Puis gives a five-chain, “Consequently” gives a five-chain). I bet there are some 7+ chains in this area for smart cookies to find.
I have no doubts these can be improved upon! I did try asking AI and it was really poor at guessing chains. I’d love to hear what the longest chains you can find are. Note that generally you should be able to use a keyboard shortcut to switch languages back and forth, it’s Cmd+Shift+S on Mac.
I will add: it’s quite shocking how many words you might think “surely this doesn’t have a direct translation” will give a two-chain... and then so many words give an immediate three-chain.
OK, So Why Google Translate?
For both of these, Google Translate isn’t the focus, so much as: Google Translate represents translation with as little context as possible, without prejudice or bias. I actually think Google Translate does a great job at this, which is exactly why it’s a fun base for these language games.
To be honest, there’s no true point to this, and that’s part of the fun! I found a few chains by accident while learning French, and it reminded me of that telephone exhibit. I would love to read a post/book/article on how long chains are structured and which language pairs produce the longest and shortest.
But honestly, please email me with your long chains at colmanhumphrey@gmail.com ! I’ll update this post with the longest and most fun chains I get.