Imagine There's An Image

Ever since Prairie Girl gave me the idea of adding Site Meter to my blog, I've enjoyed checking up on things to see who's tuning in.

You can't really tell exactly who visited, but you can get a very rough geographic idea of where the visitor is from. Often, Site Meter is able to show you the "refering URL," that is, the page that linked to your own site.

Funny things sometimes come up when I look at these refering links. For example, today at 8:57:52 pm EET (Eastern European Time,) someone connected to ITAI via www.ripe.net, jumping to my blog from this link: http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=image%20moto&meta=, which is a Google Germany search for the words image moto.

Sure enough, when I go to this page, I see a link to my recent "Moto-Photo" blog post... and... what's that next to the link?... another link that says, Diese Seite übersetzen. Hey, doesn't übersetzen mean "to translate" in German? Let's see what this leads to.

And then, something that never occurred to me: there's my post, complete with photos, in German!

Here is a paragraph, as Google translated it:

Den anderen Morgen, nahm ich B(2)(a), das mich hat, f?e Weile zu sitzen in einem Link-drehenweg gerade her?on Fishpaws lokale Paket-Waren und Nacjbarschaftsladen. Den southboundverkehr wartend zum freien Raum, beachtete ich eine Reihe der gr?oosenecklampen, die an der Seite des Geb?es angebracht wurden. Auf diesem sonnigen Morgen warfen sie die langen, w?llen Erscheinen. Geistesanmerkung.

Well, my German isn't that good, but since I wrote it, I can almost understand it. Looks like some letters are getting dropped or transposed for some reason. Isn't that an "h" that ought to be the fourth letter in Nacjbarschaftsladen in place of the "j"? And what are those question marks where letters should be?

I took my original paragraph and dropped it into FreeTranslation.com to see how that would do. Out came

Den anderen Morgen habe ich B(2)(a), genommen, der mich hat, der für eine Weile in einer linken Seite-Drehung-Gasse nur gegenüber vom einem örtlichen Paketgüter von Fishpaw und Bequemlichkeit sitzt, speichert. Warten auf den in Richtung Süden Verkehr, zu reinigen, habe ich, dass eine Reihe von grünen gooseneck Lampen bemerkt, die auf der Seite vom Gebäude aufgestellt worden sind. An diesem sonnigen Morgen werfen sie lange, anmutige Schauen. Geistige Notiz.

Well, that makes a little more sense, and it's interesting that the word choices in German are slightly different. I have no idea which is better, of course - I speak German about as well as Tarzan spoke English.

Just for fun, I took the Google translation into German and plopped it into FreeTranslation.com to see how that would machine-translate back into English. I helped the process out a little by fixing a word here and there in the German where there were missing letters. Here's what I got:

Did the other morning, take has me I B(2)(a), that to sit for a while in a left trick way just here? on Fishpaws local package-were and neighborhood store. The southboundverkehr waiting to the free room, noted I a row of green gooseneck lamps, that were mounted at the side of the building. On this sunny morning, they threw the long, attractive shadows appearance. Spirit comment.

Spirit comment: learn some German you must (Yoda sounds it like!)

By the way, here is how Prairie Girl, who I'm sure speaks perfectly good German, sounds in the Google translation:

Ich habe sie nicht oben auf ihrem Angebot genommen, aber ich denke, das ich werde. Eine gute Erfahrung aber ich denken, das im Allgemeinen, was Sie antrafen, eine normalere Reaktion ist.

which FreeTranlsation.com graciously translated back into English for me as

I did not take it above on its offer, but I think, become that I. A good experience however I think, that in general, what you found, a more normal reaction is.

All I can say is, P.G., you have a lot of patience to wait so long to get to the verb!