What Did You Say?

Here’s the scene: over at Monrovia Top 5 (or MT5 to those in “the know”), last week’s topic was a scenario: Top 5 historical figures you would have over for a dinner party. Two rules: all must be deceased and all are coming to the same dinner party. For no real reason, I chose this week to antagonize my frielumni by explaining why each of their quintets would end in chaos. This seemed like a good idea at first, but by the end of the 10th one, I was running out of the funny.

Comedy Rule #732: If all else fails, mock the French.

Liz Grimm, who understands the glory of SportsNight, posted the following 5: Harry Truman, Napoleon, Charles DeGaulle, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Martin Luther. 40% of this table share national pride with Gerard Depardieu. With this fuel for the funny fire, I penned the following:

Since Bonaparte and DeGaulle are French, Liz decides serve only the most exquisite French cooking a grad student’s income can buy. Fresh-cut French fries, French toast, and French-bread pizza. DeGaulle accepts gladly an occasion to sit, since it feels as it lives in an airport these days. Napoleon needs a phone book to sit on. But then Truman wages war when he insists that it should be called “Freedom Toast.” Oswald jumps to his assistance, firing shots from the grassy knoll in Liz’s living room. Martin Luther posts a list of grievances regarding how his meal was cooked on the fridge.

But before I posted it, I used www.freetranslation.com to convert it to French. That way, only Liz, Dave Reif, Zidanne, and some Canadian hockey players can get the jokes. Why? I have no idea.

But the real fun lies when I used FreeTranslation to convert it back to English. It then read as the following:

Since Bonaparte and DeGaulle are French, Liz decides serves only the French more exquisite cooking an income of the student of third cycle can buy. French of fresh cut fries, the French roasted bread, and the pizza of French bread. DeGaulle accepts with joy an occasion to sit, since it feels as it lives in an airport these days. Napoleon needs a directory to sit on. But then Truman takes the war when it insists that it called “the jumps of BREAD Oswald Liberty ROAST.” to his assistance, emptying blows of the mounds grassy in the parlor of Liz. Martin Luther posts a list of grievances of why his meal was cooked on the fridge.

I have no idea what this means.

Then an idea came to me. If so much can disappear from coherence in a quick switch from English-to-French-to-English, what if my delightful vignette continued to circle the globe? Surely another country’s language could put this all into perspective!

So from our revised English, the dinner party got relocated to Spain. Then back to America. And then to Germany, where certainly Martin Luther must have felt temporarily at home. But then it was reverted back to English, so that the readers of You’re a Blog can witness just what happens when you invite dead people to dinner.

Here’s the English-French-Spanish-German version:

Because Bonaparte and DeGaulle are French, Liz decides she can buy only the French the kitchen of more especially an income of the student that it of third cycle. French of the fresh cut fríe, has the French bread, and the pizza of the Baguettes roasted. DeGaulle takes an occasion hingesetzt to become itself with the good fortune at that because since life in an airport nowadays feels bad. Napoleon needs that a guide to become himself, in hingesetzt.

But then Truman takes the war if exists, that called “the BREADS freedom roast.” Oswald to its aid jumps, that empties the blows of the piles that are covered with herb in the living room by Liz.

Martin Luther announces a list of the complaints, of how his food was cooked in the refrigerator.