Google Translating Magic: the Gathering cards, According to Gatherer
Lately, I’ve been following Rosewatta Stone and the rest of the jokers on #GoogleTranslatesMTG as they use the world’s foremost translation engine to warp cards beyond recognition. They’re chucking cards through Google’s chip shredder of a translation tool to satisfy a public demand for unrecognizable deckmaster confetti. Let me show you an example from Rosewatta Stone:
I want to join in the fun. But my Twitter feed is a split mix of news about my audio drama, my move nights in downtown Haverhill, my movie critique show, and the occasional According to Gatherer article. It would take very little to overwhelm it with #GoogleTranslatesMTG entries.
But I also write articles, so that’s what I’m doing right now. For those who are following ‘The Cube According to Gatherer‘, don’t worry. This is only a quick detour. We’ll be back on track next article. But what’s the point of a road trip without a few attractions off the beaten path, eh?
I don’t know how everyone else chooses cards to translate, but I noticed most people aim for the iconic cards. The According to Gatherer tradition, however, is to lean on Gatherer’s ‘random card’ button to provide material. So we’re curating a different kind of collection. Get your scuba gear, because we’re taking a deeper dive.
Rosewatta Stone uses a bot to create cards. For now, I lack that luxury. But while it’s time consuming to replicate the process ‘by hand’, it’s not unreasonable. The following cards were created by going to Google Translate, copy/pasting the card content, choosing a random language, and translating. Then swapping the source language and the translation. Then choosing a random language to translate that into. Rinse and repeat a total of twelve times. You now have a #GoogleTranslatesMTG.
Then do everything three more times. Because not every translated card is a winner. You want a large enough nursery to choose from. Personally, I presumed the toughest part would be choosing between my babies. But there was usually one hunky baby in a set of four, and I could toss the other runts away.
What follows are those results. If you want to see the original card and/or how Google translate found its way there, you can click the ‘Show’ button in the ‘Original Card’ spoiler box below the card. I got to admit, copying the entire chain of languages every time was a giant pain. I probably won’t do that next time. But I figured it didn’t hurt to show my work this first time out.
Admittedly this one is the least funny of the lot. But I kept it around because there were two more points I wanted to make. On occasion, I took the liberty to add capitalization or a punctuation mark when I thought it helped the overall card. But when it gave the card more personality, like with how The Secret of Myurgang Tong helps the city smile when I control ten people or more… well, I kept that in.
As this card shows, on some occasions a word or a whole phrase got stuck, untranslated. Sometimes it worked anyway, like in the land of Myurgang Tong. Google Translate probably assumed Myurgang Tong was a person or a place. So as it bounced back and forth between languages trying to make sense of the gibberish each new translation brought, it built sentence fragments around what it presumed was a proper noun.
The result: an accidental choice name for a new Magic: the Gathering location. Heck, I want to play an Elf Bard in The Secrets of Myurgang Tong, an adventure for four players, levels six to eight.
Daretti appears to be on a political campaign to convince voters that online registration is one of the most important things in the world. To be honest, I’ve seen less cohesive arguments from Nigerian princes in my e-mail inbox compared to whatever Daretti is putting forward. Who knows? Maybe I want to register a new home page and update the document to my current name. Do I need to pay an advance fee?
It’s remarkable how much Goldgary sounds like a shampoo. So I did what seemed like the obvious choice, and made it one. Go get your local grocer and say, “GGs for me, please!”
Moving on…
Never smile at a crocodile. Don’t be taken in by his welcome grin. He does not need help. I repeat: He needs help not.
If find it funny how this card subsumed both of its keywords, and instead instructs you to call for more information about the crocodile. I presume we’re calling super-international, since we need to press 1+, then an additional 1+.
Ladies and Gentlemen, get ready to get married to Daddy Raven. He’s no boy; he’s a player. And he can easily choose a new match whenever he damn well wants.
What I really like, however, is what happens when you roll chaos. “Bohemia pocket is preparing for rich violence” sounds like the sort of gibberish pass sentence I’d spout to get into a speak easy. Or maybe it’s something Alex and his droogs would say before hunting me down on the street, beating me with canes, then settling their rassoodocks on the Korova Milkbar.
In my head, I’ve been singing Mountain Mountain to the tune of Monty Python’s theme song for Denis Moore. It goes something like this:
Mountain Mountain, Mountain Mountain, Travelling on the Mountains.
Mountain Mountain, Mountain Mountain, likes fashion card drivers.
Fi-na-la-ly!
T.G.I.F.!
Mountain Mountain!
Mountain Mountain,
Mountain Mountain.
When I first read this card, I thought “Abebe’s economy” said “Applebee’s”. What a pity it doesn’t. I’m not sure why it’s charming to imagine a Yeti who loves hanging out at Applebees on Thursdays. Maybe she’s a big fan of Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit? Where else is a yeti supposed to get in some Must See TV?
Look. I don’t know how you control pumpkins where you come from. But around here, when you pay you got to group all the pumpkins together.
That title didn’t fit. So I did what seemed logical to me. Now Castle Raptors has a left side and a right side, just like B.F.M. (Big Furry Monster). I’m sure that’s what the kids want nowadays, right? Cards that require two cards to cast, and names that are run-on sentences? At least, that’s what Yu-Gi-Oh! does. I mean, The Camp only has eight more characters than ‘Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Evening Twilight‘.
I see that No, no is a follower of new realist kratokracy, as outlined by William Pepperell Montague. By declaring that those who are injured are by definition ‘bad people’, No, no, is invoking the supposition that strength of force and coercive power is objectively good, and that those injured by said force are by definition morally corrupt and deserving of said injury. In the end, everyone will be equal to the number of potential and long-term soldiers.
It’s also just like a new realist to boil down the original flavor text of “Share your devotion with me.” to “Believe.” The translation isn’t quite wrong. That’s pretty much the same message. But by limiting the quotation to a single word, No, no tossed aside the values of sharing and devotion. Likewise, new realism doesn’t understand that the expression “might makes right” is not something to be lauded. It’s an unfortunate side effect of the abuse of power, and oh my god, I’m arguing philosophy with a Magic card.
They warned me this would happen some day. I can recover from this. If I’m to keep my sanity, all I need to do is stop writing this article, shut off my computer and go for a walk.
Unfortunately, much of this is gibberish. But that’s okay, because if we have any questions regarding Skywys Sky, we can send an e-mail to 4/4.
Wait… what’s this about the amount I deposited into my account? Um… guys? I think I really have been advance fee scammed by Google Translate and the makers of Magic: the Gathering. I don’t even know how to report this, or to whom to report this. Does the FBI have a department for magical crime investigation? Help?
Broken. Children do not understand how to evaluate, and will take almost anything as a gift. Want a Hershey’s Kiss my little dude? Great. Now I have two hundred colorless mana. With but a simple tap of five more lands, I can deal 40 damage to five other Commander players with a single Fireball. Coincidence? Nope! Something can’t be a coincidence if you make the scenario up yourself. And if it’s not a coincidence, then that means Wizards planned for this to happen!
So Ashton Orthodox Ideas is five stars if there’s a child in the room. If there aren’t any children in a room, however, it’s still a three star card. All you need is a smartphone, and the desire to save a starving child in a resource poor land for the price of a cup of coffee. If your opponents realize what’s up, they could always tackle you and take away your phone, so this strat isn’t a given. If that’s the case, I’d suggest running outside and finding a child to give something to, but it might be difficult if your opponents also wrestle your wallet, keys, and/or pants away from you.
Man, when did Magic become a blood sport? The Satanic Panic was right. Magic is all fun and games until you find a card that like Ashton Orthodox Ideas which turns family night into an impromptu Purge.
Here’s a technical point: When translating these cards, I’m using the most recent Oracle wording as opposed to their printed wording. That’s important here, because Ashnod’s Altar‘s current Oracle text is now reduced to four words: “Sacrifice a creature: Add cc.” This is paired down from from the original Antiquities printing, when WotC staff fell over themselves to explain game rules on card text.
That being the case, I figured I’d supply a bonus Ashnod’s Altar translation based on the original printing. I ended up with this…
…which also reduced the text length, while providing a message that more closely matches the original artwork. Do… do you know something I don’t Alun Asad? Maybe I should play four of these. I mean… you can’t be too careful…
Look… I don’t know how you’re supposed to ‘Make God’s Believe’. But it behooves you to find out, since the result is you get to manipulate God into killing and speaking like the Almighty is your puppet. You can even make God trash talk people and tell them that their mother is pregnant. You know God. He’s all about informing people on upcoming spontaneous pregnancies. “Ya mom’s pregnant, and you just been Punk’d!” Classic God move, bro!
There’s no big whoppers on this card; I just like all the little details. I like how ‘Natter Knolls – A White Guy’ sounds like a rapper from Cedar Knolls, out in Yonkers. I like how this rapper ‘Knatterknolls every day’, and how nobody likes him. I like how he has what he thinks is a killer persona, and how he tells everyone that if he don’t get his knatterknolls, he’s gonna go feral and turn into some sort of werewolf. I have no idea why a pair of computers attacked a child, though. This world can be so vicious sometimes.
We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled Gatherer cube next article. Until then, cue the archive!
Wow, that was delightfully bonkers.
It looks like you might be going through slightly more languages than Rosewatta Stone does. At least, the text you end up with here seems to be significantly more divergent from the original rules text than theirs is.
It also looks like one of the languages kept inserting random email/computer/e-commerce terminology where it really wasn’t required. There’s a bit of a running theme of that, enough that I’d be mildly curious to try to work out which language that was. But, y’know, not actually curious enough to go and look at the lists of relevant languages to see if there was a common factor.
Fun stuff! 🙂
Didn’t take me too long to check, since the email/computer/e-commerce terminology was most pronounced on three cards. So I opened those up and compared languages. Interestingly, there’s no commerce ‘lingua franca’ between the three of them. In fact, Daretti and Crocunura only share one language, Afrikaans, which wasn’t used in Dance of the Skywise. Weird.
Huh. That is indeed strange. Maybe Google Translate’s training data skews in that direction for a whole bunch of languages.
Mm. It’s possible that the AI is just learning the things we’re most likely translating for when making obscure language crossovers. If you knew Tagalog, to pull a language out of a hat, and needed to translate to Swedish most randomly, the most likely reason would probably be something to do with finance, banks, and business transactions. It would be incredibly rare for a person from the Philippines to need to talk to someone from Sweden for any other reason.
But maybe that’s my Ameri-centric bias showing.