TriumphAnt

The Wright Brothers, I recall reading last year in one of the many articles produced about them on the 100th anniversary of their success at Kitty Hawk, made a key breakthrough after spending literally hundreds of hours studying seagulls in flight. The breakthrough? They noted that gulls bent their wings and banked their bodies when they turned. Until that discovery, aircraft designers had been trying to engineer aircraft that fought both those natural tendencies, making a long stream of rigid and clumsy craft that flew only inasmuch as “dropping like a stone” can be construed as “flight”. When Wilbur and Orville designed a flexing “bendability” into their wings, and added banking (tilting while turning) to the Wright Flyer’s capabilities, they brought powered flight successfully into the world.

Thomas Edison, I read somewhere, tried and rejected over 1000 substances as the basis for the filament in his electric lightbulb before finally succeeding with tungsten.

My point is that, for all the innovative brilliance in this world, sometimes the spark that ignites the fire of discovery is created by the most mundane of observations and by repeatedly demanding yet another answer to the endless “What if…” questions.

All of which, I now realize, is way too pompous an analogy to use to introduce my latest discovery. So forget it. Just start reading here. (But you say you’ve already read… Oh, sorry. My goof.)

Here is my discovery: The English in Hikana’s parents’ messages is possibly not their English at all. As a result of a simple idea and an equally simple experiment, I now think that it’s probably the product of a wash and rinse through the online Babelfish translator.

And here’s why I think so.

This is the text of a pretty simple message I sent to Hikana’s parents after she and her classmates had safely departed Ottawa early Saturday morning. This is exactly as sent, and in its entirety:

“Hello Yoshinori and Kaneko and family... Hikana is now in Toronto (400 kilometres from Ottawa). She will watch a baseball game. She will also visit Niagara Falls – near Toronto. Tonight, she and the Ritsumeikan students will stay in hotels in Toronto. She will return home very soon. She was very happy to visit Ottawa. We were very happy to be her host family in Canada. We hope you and Hikana will continue to send us letters and pictures by e-mail. Congratulations on your new restaurant. Good luck!”

After I zinged that brief string of simple sentences though Babelfish, and had it rendered using “English to Japanese”, I next blocked the Japanese version and, just for interest’s sake, ran it back through Babelfish, using the “Japanese to English” option.

Here’s what I got back:

“Today Yoshinori and funds and the family... as for Hikana Toronto (400 kilometers from Ottawa) now it is. She looks at the tournament of the baseball. In addition as for her -- Toronto being soon... you visit Niagara (five untranslated Japanese characters appeared here). Tonight, her and the Ritsumeikan student is restricted to the Toronto hotel. She returns to the house very eventually. She visiting Ottawa, was very happy. We were very happy in her host family of Canada. We you and Hikana desire the fact that it continues to send the letter and image in us with E-mail. The celebration of the restaurant where you are new. Good luck!”

I was struck by the odd combination of really strained syntax and the repeated rendition of the almost, but just not quite, right word. And it seems quite similar to the style in the messages that Hikana’s parents sent to us here in Ottawa.

Two things occur to me: 1. Thank goodness I didn’t just merrily send a Babelfish Japanese version of my message to them. (“Hi folks, your daughter is being held prisoner in a hotel in Toronto. With good behaviour, she’ll be out soon”); 2. Their computer illiteracy (or so Hikana told us) notwithstanding, if it happens that they in their turn – or someone intending courtesy on their behalf – ran my previous messages through Babelfish, what must they be thinking of their daughter’s experiences here in Canada?

Please hurry home, Hikana. And please tell your dad and mom, and all the other folks throwing rocks at the Canadian consulate in Kyoto that what they think we said is not what we actually said at all.

Oh, and as an added footnote, I did sign all three of our family members’ names to the message. Babelfish refused to translate my wife and daughter’s names and simply left them as is, but it thoughtfully rendered me (Mike) as “Microphone”, which my aforementioned wife and daughter immediately adopted as my new name – after they were done with their howls of laughter.

PS…

In a recent entry. I wondered about the use of the word “taiga” in one of their messages. Earlier today, I was closely reading Hikana’s pre-trip personal data sheet to find a home mailing address and, Bingo! She has a sister, and she has a brother – his name is Taiga.

Disclaimer: The mental lightbulb that clicked on when I saw this probably owes nothing to Mr Edison, and everything to the late Mr Douglas Adams, in whose “increasingly misnamed five-part trilogy”, A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the universally translating Babelfish appears (It is indeed a fish. And you stick it in your ear.)