Lost in Translation (an international game of Telephone)

I was inspired, or maybe obsessed, by a poorly translated fortune in a fortune cookie. It as obviously a very profound phrase, I assume, prior to being translated into English. But now, it was odd.

When going from one language to another, something is usually lost. It got me thinking. What would happen when you chain multiple translations front to back and then finally translate it into the original language. That shouldn't be too hard to do. So I obsessively stayed up last Friday until the wee hours of Saturday, making the app. Hopefully getting it out of my head and onto the server would let me sleep.

Meanings get lost as words are translated from one language to another. Enter a simple phrase, choose a couple languages to build a chain of translation and see how the meaning at the end is not what it may have been intended to be.

Here is what I ended up with. Try it out. Let me know.

Lost in Translation (an international game of Telephone): http://openfermenter.com/lostintranslation

Tim