Re: ID of anonymous posters via word analysis?

"Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger@lehman.com> said:
>Astonishing how far urban legends go. This keeps getting distorted
>further and further. I've heard this go further and further and
>further from the version I first heard. I wonder if there ever was a
>real story to begin with.

Good question. I just checked a terse history of machine translation,
and it didn't mention any version of this. I suspect that its origin
was as a hypothetical example of the kinds of problems that can arise,
and that it didn't actually happen in any real life situation. Examples
like that have always been common in linguistics papers on such subjects.
	Doug

> Good question. I just checked a terse history of machine translation,
> and it didn't mention any version of this.

And in the alt.folklore.urban FAQ we find:
F. Russian/Chinese mechanical translator translates "out of sight, out of mind"
   into "blind and insane".  Also "Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" 
   as "the drink is good but the meat is rotten."

(The "F" means "known to be false")

   Eli   ebrandt@jarthur.claremont.edu