Original
三顾茅庐的传奇，世人已经熟到不能再熟。但是，如果以为诸葛亮是刘备寻访贤才的过程中，最为辛苦的一个，那你就错了。

Google Translator:
Highlighting the legend, the world has been cooked to a no longer familiar. However, if the look for talented people that Zhuge Liang is the process of Liu Bei, the most difficult one, you’re wrong.

Yahoo’s Babel Fish:
Repeatedly asks the legend, the common people were already ripe to cannot be again ripe. But, if thought that Zhuge Liang is Liu Bei looks for in talent’s process, most laborious, then you were wrong.

As a reference, here is Mei & Lara’s translation:
The three visits to the straw cottage has to be our best-known legend. But if you think getting Zhuge Liang was Liu Bei’s most arduous recruiting task, you’d be wrong.

Looks like both Google and Yahoo gave up on translating “The three visits”, even though it’s readily documented in any dictionary of Chinese idioms.

I went straight to online translators, and found that in this case the bad translation didn’t come from an online tool after all. Both Google and Yahoo translators did an ok (though far from “good”) job translating the warning. However, feeding the results from one translator to another, and then back, could produce very interesting results. Below is the result of putting the Cyclone warning through Google Translate and Babel Fish (Yahoo’s translator).

Original:
The cyclone roller coaster is a high impact ride. Any person with back, neck, or heart problems should not ride this ride. No pregnant person should ride. Hold on with both hands.

After Google Translater:
旋风过山车是一种高影响乘坐。任何人与背部，颈部，或心脏问题，不能坐这车程。没有怀孕的人应该坐。就用双手按住。

Feed that into Yahoo Translater:
The tornado roller coaster is one kind of high influence rides. Anybody with the back, the pate, or the heart question, cannot sit this driving distance. Has not been pregnant the human should sit. Uses both hands to hold down.

Google again:
龙卷风过山车是一类高影响游戏机。与背部，颈部或心脏问题，任何人都不能坐这个车程。尚未怀孕的人应该坐下。使用双手按住。

Yahoo again:
The tornado roller coaster is one kind affects the mechanical games high. With the back, the pate or the heart question, anybody cannot sit this driving distance. Not yet is pregnant the human should sit down. Uses both hands to hold down.

Google again:
龙卷风是一种过山车影响较高的机械游戏。由于背部，颈部或心脏的问题，任何人不能坐在这个驾驶距离。尚未怀孕的人应该坐下来。使用双手按住。

Yahoo again:
The tornado is one kind of roller coaster influence high machinery game. As a result of the back, the pate or heart’s question, anybody cannot sit in this driving distance. Not yet is pregnant the human should sit down. Uses both hands to hold down.

Google again:
龙卷风是一种过山车影响力高机械游戏。由于背部，颈部或心脏的问题的结果，任何人不能坐在这个驾驶距离。尚未怀孕的人应该坐下来。使用双手按住。

Yahoo again:
The tornado is one kind of roller coaster influence high machinery game. As a result of the back, the pate or heart’s question’s result, anybody cannot sit in this driving distance. Not yet is pregnant the human should sit down. Uses both hands to hold down.

Google again:
龙卷风是一种过山车影响力高机械游戏。由于背部，颈部或心脏的问题的结果的结果，任何人不能坐在这个驾驶距离。尚未怀孕的人应该坐下来。使用双手按住。

After several more rounds between Google and Yahoo translators, the result seem to stabilize except for the second sentence. Google appears to keep adding on “的结果” (results) to it, so we end up having a Chinese translation out of Google like this — I’m sure you can end up with any number of 的结果 appended if you keep doing this:
龙卷风是一种过山车影响力高机械游戏。由于背部，颈部或心脏的问题的结果的结果的结果的结果的结果，任何人不能坐在这个驾驶距离。尚未怀孕的人应该坐下来。使用双手按住。

One final round of translation by Yahoo to get us back to English:
The tornado is one kind of roller coaster influence high machinery game. As a result of the back, the pate or heart’s question’s result’s result’s result’s result’s result, anybody cannot sit in this driving distance. Not yet is pregnant the human should sit down. Uses both hands to hold down.

This endless piling up of “results” might be a result of Google’s machine-learning based translation algorithm. With strong machine-learning you can get fairly good results in many cases, but occasionally you do need to have a sense of sentence and phrase structure in order to avoid piling up endless “results” when doing back-and-forth translation.

Given the fun I had simply cutting and pasting between Google and Yahoo, perhaps the two companies can consider teaming up to make a fun online game out of their translators.

Just look at how people treat Falun Gong on Baidu forums — you can’t see Falun Gong posts in public posts of course, but occasionally you’d see really irritated forum member posting something like “just stop harassing me you Wheels! I alreeady know what your opinion is and i never want to hear from you again”. “Wheels” is what people use to get around the Baidu filter for “falun gong”. Apparently the Falun Gong people would fish for private emails from forums and then repeatedly spam them with their propaganda materials. A lot of the banned ideologies (Falun Gong, Tibet-independence) really don’t inspire the citizens to risk any inconvenience (let alone their freedom and life) to help.

一无所有

我曾经问个不休　你何时跟我走
可你却总是笑我　一无所有
我要给你我的追求　还有我的自由
可你却总是笑我　一无所有
噢…… 你何时跟我走
脚下的地在走　身边的水在流
可你却总是笑我　一无所有
为何你总笑个没够　为何我总要追求
难道在你面前　我永远是一无所有
告诉你我等了很久　告诉你我最后的要求
我要抓起你的双手　你这就跟我走
这时你的手在颤抖　这时你的泪在流
莫非你是正在告诉我　你爱我一无所有
噢…… 你这就跟我走

The story about the seismic rating on the official site after the Yushu earthquake reminds me a lot of stories I read about Mao’s tours of farms in the 1950s: He saw wheat fields so thick with plants that kids could stand on them, vindicating his agricultural policies. The moment his entourage left, the kids were taken off the benches they’d been standing on and the triply-packed wheat was thinned back to a survivable density. Millions died of starvation because local officials couldn’t manage to tell the big guy he was WRONG. 55 years later, more of the same.

Anyhow, I also read of an interesting use of the internet in China; someone posted an anonymous video of a well-dressed woman deliberately stomping a kitten to death. This offended so many people that a group created a site devoted to tracking the woman down – some of those 300+million users must know something, was the reasoning. Eventually her identity was discovered; she lost her iron rice-bowl job, and so did her videographer. So internet vigilantism is another interesting use. Let’s hope the Chinese version is more precise than in America – I have in mind the Tea Party psychos who threw a brick through a congressman’s brother’s window after the health care reform vote – the TP folks had looked up the wrong address on the internet…..