FC: Yowsa! Web translator upsets humor-impaired, from CNET

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[What's next, the Canadianizer? Mad Magazine? --Declan]



http://www.news.com/Perspectives/Column/0,176,444,00.html?st.ne.per.gif.a

Yowsa! Web translator upsets humor-impaired
June 2, 2000
By Brian Livingston

     A free Internet service that displays Web sites as if written
     in hillbilly talk has shut itself down because too many
     corporations have said, in effect, "It ain't funny."

     The Dialectizer suspended its service of "translating" Web sites
     two weeks ago. The service converted entire Web pages into
     "Redneck, Pig Latin, Elmer Fudd," and other dialects.

     The conversions didn't change any material on the original site.
     Instead, a temporary translation was displayed in a new browser
     window on a user's screen.

     But the owners of some translated sites were (as the Redneck
     converter would put it) as ticked off as a weasel in a blender.

     Viewed through the Dialectizer's hillbilly prism, for example, one
     well-known corporate slogan
     becomes, "Th' quality goes in
     befo'e th' name goes on."

     Dialectizer creator Samuel
     Stoddard said in a statement, "It
     is not worth it to me to sacrifice
     my peace of mind and fend off the
     continual onslaught of distraught
     corporations and Webmasters
     threatening legal action."

     [...]

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