Do you enjoy eating cabbages?

We're not sure whether the teenager known online as binarypigeon does, but her mother tells us that when she wanted to test the limitations of online automatic translation systems, she typed the phrase "I enjoy eating cabbages" into one.

She told it to translate this into Japanese - and then translate the resulting phrase back into English, and then translate that to another language, and then back to English, and so on.

After approximately 20 such translations, binarypigeon's simple statement had turned into:

"Therefore, that is eaten because of possibility of fact of thing of possible possibility, designated that and that of a certain specification regarding that reason being shown it becomes, is inferred or as been, because either one types, whether it has been shown the fact that possibility should do my cabbage to that of the reason of this type, either one should enjoy some dependence of the range hypothesis our appointments which are shown, whether, these of appointment of the appointment which is shown are done."

 In the light of this, Feedback hopes that international bodies like the United Nations will continue to rely on human translators rather than mechanical ones for a while.

Feedback, New Scientist, 16 October 2010