Friday, April 30, 2010

Flowers Flowers, Give Me Your Reaction



Since yesterdays' post I have had difficulty getting the tune Daisy (or to give it it's proper title Daisy Bell) out of my mind. Catchy as the tune is, there is a limited number of times those lyrics can circulate around the ring-road of your mind without beginning to sound a little tired. 

"Daisy Daisy,
Give me your answer do!
I'm half crazy,
All for the love of you!
It won't be a stylish marriage,
I can't afford a carriage,
But you'll look sweet on the seat
Of a bicycle built for two !"


Some years ago I invented a silly game to play with popular song lyrics. Those who have hung on my every word for the last four years will remember the August 2007 post "This I Have Done My Route" which was my adaptation of the lyrics to My Way. So yesterday I decided to take the same approach to Daisy Bell. I took the original English lyrics by Harry Dacre, fed them into a machine translation programme and translated them into Norwegian. I then took the resulting Norwegian words and machine translated them into Serbian, and then the Serbian words were subsequently translated into Icelandic. I then switched translating machines from World Lingo to Google Translator, just to add a little extra spice. The Icelandic was translated into Dutch, and finally the Dutch was translated back into English. The resulting song - "Flowers, flowers" - is quite pleasing and I will ask you all to get Friday off to a jolly start by joining me in singing a rousing chorus. All together now :

Flowers flowers
give me your reaction.
I'm half crazy,
love you all!
It will not be a modern marriage,
not hired and carts,
but you see a nice place
bicycle built for two!



16 comments:

  1. Ted,

    Taking your result, translating into Dutch and then back into Ebglish produces the following:

    The flowers of flowers give your response me. I' halfly crazily, love you all! It a in a modern way rented marriage will not be, and none rides, but you see a nice place bicycle which is built for two!

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  2. Doug : Is that Dutch or Double Dutch you translated it into?
    George.

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  3. "give me your reaction" - oh that's so romantic...
    I think I prefer the original, but even so, I really don't want to be singing it all day..

    Too late....

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  4. Isn't Flower the name of the little skunk in Disney's "Bambi"?

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  5. This has me giggling this morning as I drink my first coffee of the day. What an inventive idea! It rather reminds of a game we played as children when Kid #1 whispered a phrase to kid #2 and so-on down the line, and the end result was a garbled distortion of the original phrase.

    I really like this part:
    "I'm half crazy,
    love you all!"

    My husband speaks fluent Dutch. He'll enjoy this post.

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  6. so alan why dont you record yourself singing it so we can all enjoy...smiles.

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  7. Be careful Alan, you could be starting something here. Look what happened to Sepia Saturday!

    By-the-way, no offence, but the WV is unatic. Could this be the machinery attempting to pass judgment?

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  8. Now you've gone and done it, Alan. You've introduced me to a new game - which I'm sure will be showing up on my blog in the not-too-distant future.

    By the way - you COULD have averted your eyes from the "I'm Up For It" ladies undies. Could have. Not sure I would have, though. Why pass up a chance like that? Funny.

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  9. What a great way the 'ghost' poetry! -J

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  10. Tee hee, love the translation.. But now you've got me running the song round my head. It's a funny side effect of being deaf - I always have a song fragment playing endlessly. Most often it's just a little piece of a stupid song that I don't like; occasionally a full-on orchestral piece with all the parts! Auditory hallucinations, I think it's called.

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  11. Fantastic! Very creative. You, sir, are an "outside the box" thinker.

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  12. Now that's just silly,doesn't even rhyme! I have been guilty of doing that actually and it's fun! And thank you (NOT) for putting that damn song back in my head and I haven't even finished reading all the Theme Thursday's yet. GAH!

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  13. I've had that song stuck in my mind ever since visiting your blog for Theme Thursday, too! haha.

    The new version is cute, too...but doesn't flow off the tongue quite as easily. But that's a good thing...won't get stuck in your head so quickly. :)

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  14. Hasn't Prince Charles been singing 'Flowers flowers, give me your reaction' for years? I swear that's his song.

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  15. That's fun! Eberle has your habit of re-writing lyrics to tunes she gets stuck in her head.

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  16. Catchy and I won't have to hum it all day as I won't remember the words. It is a good think you did to reinvent the wheel.

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