Here’s a fun way to kill time. Put the lyrics to your favorite song (poem, movie quote, Bible verse, whatever) into one free, online translator, then put the translated text into a second free, online translator and see how screwed up the resulting English comes out. It’s like the old telephone game but better!

Here’s a verse from U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love)”

One man caught on a barbed wire fence.
One man he resists.
One man washed on an empty beach.
One man betrayed with a kiss.

I put that into Yahoo’s Babelfish to get a Spanish translation. Then I copied the Spanish into Google’s Translate. Here’s the result.

A man caught in a man near one of the barbed wire that he opposes.
A man washed on an empty beach man betrayed with a kiss.

I tried it again, this time Google first and I used German as the carrier. This was better, but aparently, barbed wire didn’t translate at all.

A man imprisoned on a Stacheldrahtzaun.
A man holds.
A man washed on an empty beach.
A man with a kiss betray.