Zed started a neat thread "Hmmm" inviting people to post examples of words imported into english, such as "macho", which have an inflection in the original language which would produce comical results if that inflection were associated with the english usage.

Here's what Zed says about "macho":

One of my favorites was a very old Spanish English dictionary that translated the Spanish word macho as i) masculine, ii) a male mule or iii) a very stupid man.

I personally regretted that I couldn't respond to Zed's challenge because I am not proficient in any language other than english.

I did a little search on the Internet and came up with the tale about the CIA using an early computer to translate Russian. The CIA director tested the translation program himself by entering the phrase "out of sight, out of mind" into the computer. He obtained the Russian translation and then fed the Russian translation back to himself in english. The result: "invisible insanity".

Altho this story is said to be apocryphal, it sounded plausible so I decided to see what would happen if I followed the same approach using AltaVista's "babelfish".

I entered "out of sight" for translation into Spanish and I got "fuera de vista".

Then I entered "fuera de vista" for translation into English and I got "outside Vista".

Now here's a game anyone can play, and it is sure to produce some very interesting results.

"outside Vista" is just the beginning.

I am going to call this game "FiddleFaddle", at least for now.

It is not as cerebral as Zed's game, I concede.

Since I am probably the only one on this Board who can't play Zed's game, I may end up playing FiddleFaddle by myself. [It wouldn't be the first time. No matter. I have lots of "sock puppets" to keep me company. ]

Hmmm. I wonder how "sock puppets" would FiddleFaddle?