>>What was the "galactic pot healer" in the original? I never heard of that.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Pot_Healer by Philip K Dick.
>
>One example is when the guy dictates "Earnest Hemingway" to the machine, then asks for a Japanese translation, then dials a computer in Japan to get English translation back, and it comes as "seriously constricting path".

Ah yes, the hazards of translation of speech to text... Once remember the amusing case where a name of an American singer Pete Cetera resulted in text "pizza Terra".

And then there is this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0kDcUEDfmY

Up until a couple years ago, the result of translation of Japanese to English on BabelFish was usually Yoda-speak (i.e. the result often sounded like Master Yoda from Star Wars [at least in the English-language verison] with his inside-out/backward sort of grammar ).

-0kDcUEDfmY