"... and then back into English."

Ever since a skit on SNL, an obscure skit from the late 80's, in which Jon Lovitz plays a lounge singer who explains the next song as one he had translated from English to French, and then back into English, I've been intrigued with this concept and wanted to know if it'd turn out funny.

Apparently, I'm not alone. In fact, there's an entire blog, updated daily, devoted to translating Garfield comics into Japanese and then back. (Also look for the blog that removes all traces of Garfield, the character, from the comic strip.) The problem with this blog is that sometimes the text is just too incomprehensible, which makes it kind of silly. Syntax errors are only funny in certain situations, and when a particular Japanese word or phrase is untranslatable to English, the comic keeps the Japanese, which for whatever reason, isn't funny to me.

To explore whether there might be a funniest process, perhaps by choosing a different language, or maybe doing a little syntactic tweaking, I chose a line from an old 'Nancy' comic:



I then translated the text from English to Spanish (and back), and the same for French, Chinese and German.

Spanish: "These crepes are all undulating and, nonpleasant and densely flat as I have taste of them."

French: "These crepes are undulating and deeply, nonnice and flat as I like them."

Chinese: "If I like them, these pancakes are the waves and thick, not good and plane."

German: "These pancakes are not nice and flat and thickly curved, as I like them."

Hmmm. Not quite as funny as I had hoped. Well, perhaps if I actually plug the lines in the comic itself, it would be funnier. Stay tuned.