Friday, September 24, 2010

Title Improvements Courtesy of Babelfish

Am I the only person out there who dreams about seeing my book in a foreign language? And did I or did I not just ask the stupidest rhetorical question ever?

Anyway, I've been thinking about the whole foreign rights thing lately. No, I'm not trying to hint at any news, just that I was thinking the other day about how cool it would be. And really, the thing I wonder about most is what my title would sound like in translation.

I shall wonder no more, thanks to the awesomeness that is BABELFISH. I love Babelfish. If Babelfish were a person, I'd pour sparkles on my head and sneak into its bedroom to watch it sleep. That's how much I love it.

Anyway, I translated BAD TASTE IN BOYS into Spanish, and Portuguese, and Chinese, and French...

And then I translated it back into English, just because I wanted to see what would happen. This is what my title turned into:

In the Young People Taste Mal

Poor young people. I don't think you taste mal at all.

Sooo...if you're looking to waste time today, play the Babelfish game and leave your new and improved title in the comments. I needz a laugh today, peepul!

17 comments:

Julia Karr said...

Well - XVI translates as XVI and back again! lol!

K. M. Walton said...

EVERYTHING'S NOT LOST

German to English:
EVERYTHING'S EMERGENCY DRAWS

erin f. danehy said...

What a fun game! I played it with the two languages I can actually pretend-converse in...

BOUND BETWEEN becomes "LIMITE ENTRE" in French, which becomes... "Limit Enters" in English again. D'Oh. It becomes GRENZE ZWISCHEN in German (LOOOOOVE the way that sounds) and that actually translates back literally! Yesssss, prepositions and German being awesome!


But I'd say your title wins, Carrie. Hehehe.

Unknown said...

I started with Wishing You Were Me and ended up with I wish you and me. Not to far off... maybe I should work on my titles.

This sounds time consuming. PS have you seen Rose Coopers blog? It's dedicated to Bacon today... which I know you heart :)

Shannon O'Donnell said...

Okay, Carrie, I did as I was told. LOL. My original title is Scott and the Naughty Boy Factory

Spanish = Scott and the Factory of Wicked Boy

French = Scott and the Machine of Unpleasant Boy

German = Scott and Impudent Boy Factory

Carrie Harris said...

These are awesome. I particularly like Julia's translation. Now I can convince myself I can speak TONS of languages because I can say the name of her book in all of them. ;)

And Shannon? I would read ALL of those.

Rose Cooper said...

Omigosh, so funny! My book will be in three countries, do you think they'll change the cover too, even though I made it? haha, that would be funny to see my drawings done diff.

Your posts always make me laugh. My post today is dedicated to Bacon. Jen said you LOVE bacon and then I remember you did a post on bacon too! That can only mean one thing--we're bacon besties!! so you HAVE to check out my blog, k?

Mason Ian Bundschuh said...

My title THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS nearly fared well from English to Spanish to French to German.

But THE ATTENDANT IN THE FORESTS doesn't sound nearly as interesting.

English to Korean and back even less so. THE WATCHER WHO IS TO THE TREE.

A book from a trees POV? How much conflict can a tree have as the main character?

Thank you Babelfish.

Stephanie Perkins said...

CHILD AND FRANCE KISSING

Hmm. That is not quite the book I wish to be known for.

Sara Raasch said...

STREAM PIRATE became PIRAT OF ELECTRICITY.

Zzzzzap.

Natalie Whipple said...

Okay, so of course I had to do Japanese and back to English for RELAX, I'M A NINJA.

Are you ready?

I' Loosen; m Ninja

I'm not sure about that punctuation/grammar, but dude.

Candice said...

Mine doesn't really work, but I did translate my entire blog to Spanish. You should type in your blog address and see what comes up. It's pretty darn cool!

Liam said...

I have a temporary title, What A Twisted World.

English to German: Eine was für verdrehte Welt

Back: One which for rotated world

I suppose it's literal.

Suzanne said...

"The Association of Pretties"... which isn't far enough off to be hilarious. I need a weirder title to begin with, I think.

Claire Dawn said...

I went through like 7 languages.

From:

STUFF of FAIRY TALES

to

RAW MATERIAL HISTORY THAT IT RUBS

I blame Japanese :)

Lenny Lee said...

hi miss carrie! yep your new title is the winner for sure. ha ha
i tried it with two of my stories and no matter how i did it frontwards backwards up down english hindi hindi english or whatever it just always is the same. yikes! does that mean my titles are boring??? ha ha
thanks for a fun post and a fun place to go.
...hugs from lenny

Lynda R Young as Elle Cardy said...

lol I'd not thought of doing that. Some of the titles are hilarious. Thanks for the giggle.
Lyn