Finally a use for machine translations!

The site www.translationparty.com is a simple, yet oddly addictive way to kill some time. It uses Google Translator to perform an indefinite number of back translations, typically producing something nonsensical and quite different from the original phrase. It’s kind of like the Telephone game where kids tell a story person to person and then at the end everyone hears how distorted the meaning got along the way.

To play, just enter a phrase (the longer the better) in English. The machine translator will translate it into Japanese, perform a back translation into English, a back translation into Japanese, another translation into English, etc. etc. It stops once it reaches “equilibrium,” the point at which the English and Japanese translate back and forth into the same thing.

Hopefully a Translation Party in Spanish will be coming soon.