Ahhh, the beauty of machine translation...

A friend of mine and I have gotten quite adept at exploiting flaws in machine translation of natural languages.  Specifically, we are generally unable to find a pairwise-idempotent translation for general human languages.  Simply put, pick any two languages; for any (coherent) source text in the first language, translate it to the second language and then translate it back into the first language.  You will find many cases where the result of the translation does not match the initial source.

In the process of doing this "research," we found that language pairs with significantly different cultural backgrounds often provide the most amusing translations.

Tools

Altavista's Babelfish Service - used for the pairwise translation
AT&T's Natural Voices product
- used to annunciate the written text

Definitions

Given two languages M and N, we denote the text T resulting from translating a source text S expressed in a native language M, into the second language N, and back to the first language M as such:

    T = S<M,N>

Results

Here is the source text S -

If you need a truck rated at no more than 1/2-ton, the Toyota Tundra is the truck for you. This truck drives much more like a car than anything the "big 3" have ever produced. The engine is so smooth with excellent power that seems to be present from top to bottom. This is the thinking man's truck. Take my advice: When you have had enough of repairs to the air conditioners, transmissions, and electrical components of your Ford, Chevy, or Dodge, trade that rig in and understand what all the hubbub is about.

Here is the result of S<English, Chinese> -

If you compare 1/2 ton need truck to estimate does not have, the Toyota frigid zone prairie is the truck for you. This truck driving are more like the automobile compares any thing " Big 3" Once produced. The engine is very smooth by is the existence from top to bottom outstanding strength as if. This is idea man' S truck. Adopts my advice that, When you have the foot ? repair to assemble and to understand you Ford, Chevy, or dodge the air conditioning, the transmission, with the electrically operated part, the trade is any all noisily about.

Here is a machine interpretation of the text in WAV file format.