Last summer the AP picked up a story on this project. In the process of archiving it for the Press page I went online to look it up. Since it was a wire story, there were multiple hits, most with identical or very similar copy. But one was strikingly distinct. The link is now dead (I wouldn’t post it anyway, because the site looked questionable, maybe malicious). But the text below, verbatim, was, I swear, posted at bkfse [dot] com.
It stands out even among all the algorithmically translated text we see today. I believe it involves not just funky text-to-text translation choices but also some mishearings, as if there was a text-to-speech stage in the process. And abbreviations are liberally applied or expanded, lending a delightful strong chemistry emphasis. “Carbon” becomes c (lowercase) while “at” becomes astatine, the rarest naturally occurring element. (It means “unstable” in Greek, so I am “a professor unstable the University of Vermont”—so much for tenure.) More specifically, I am a “euphony prof…beryllium traveling” to “rise consciousness astir clime alteration”. My favorite bit, though, is the copyright notice, which I guess I’m about to violate.
BURLINGTON, Vt (AP) — A pianist who wants to rise consciousness astir clime alteration is going to execute 251 times — successful each and each municipality successful Vermont.
David Feurzeig, a euphony prof astatine the University of Vermont, precocious gave up hose question to trim his c footprint. And he’ll beryllium traveling for his “Play Every Town Vermont” concerts successful an electrical vehicle.
“There’s a batch of resonance that radical person with this thought from different musicians, from audiences. People truly recognize viscerally that we’re successful a crisis,” helium told Vermont Public Radio.
He said the performance programs alteration from classical to jazz, and volition see his ain compositions. He said he’s enlisting section pupil musicians from each municipality and metropolis to articulation him.
It’s going to instrumentality respective years to implicit the tour. He plans to wrapper up his effort successful 2026.
(Copyright (c) 2022 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten, oregon redistributed.)
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This is priceless. I’m particularly fond of “a euphony prof astatine the University of Vermont, precocious gave up hose question to trim his c footprint.” Interesting that “music” became “euphony,” but then “precocious gave up hose question”? What on earth?!
ReplyDeleteRecently I was watching a music reviewer on Youtube while preparing to dinner and making a fair amount of noise while doing so, so I had the captions on to help with the bits I missed. And read, at one point: “you know he was into huge piles of seniority and his torture gramophone recording is excellent but…” Listening back, I discovered that the relevant words were “sonority” and “Deutsche.” …