Project 3 Meta-Text

Part 1: Analysis of the Religious Text

First of all, the 23rd psalm is probably one of the most well known and prominent psalms in popular culture simply for the line : "As I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death.."

That was the reason why I wanted to see how the shannonizer manipulated this text. To see how God would change the psalm, and to see how the Seuss voice would change it...

In my supreme and unqualified opinion I think the shannonized versions of this religious text has caused the meaning (however one interprets it) of the original to be completely lost. The "God" Shannonized version maintains a certain religious tone, but it is completely nonsensical. At least to me. With regards to the Seuss version, it has to be one of the most rediculously weird pieces of text I have ever read. Not only does it make no sense whatsoever, it is more absurd that Dr. Seuss is in his own text. Maybe that is part of what the shannonizer does, it puts a very exaggerated voice over your text. No one can claim that Dr. Seuss was this absurd.

Part 2: Analysis of my own Travestized Text

I decided that I wanted to write something, anything. I was having one of my rare moments of creativity and felt the need to exercise it out. I don't claim that its good, and I don't know if I am actually going to finish it. I just wanted to get it out on paper. As I was writing I decided that it might be interesting to use it for part of my project 3. I played around with a variety of text editors, and decided to use the Travesty algorithm. I decided to use this because it was the one that left the most coherent text after altering. Many of the other text editors completely destroyed any story like qualities my text had and were simply gibberish.

The only word I can think of to describe the travesty version of my text is "trippy". It still retains much of the same story as I wrote, and yet it seems completely foreign as well. Like its in the same world, maybe in a different time dimension, or time warp. For example, it seems like some parts of the story are repeated, but each time it is a little bit of a different situation, or different details following the event. Either way it is definitely and interesting creation, that maintains some sense. It would be interesting if they could develop a version of this that left complete endings instead of arbitrarily cutting the text off after it has reached the predetermined character limit. This was probably my favorite of the three, because it felt more personal and gave the most interesting product in my opinion.

Part 3: Analysis of the English>Arabic>English Translation of the first few stanzas of the Raven

It's interesting to use the google translator because it gives you some insight into how foreign languages work. How in some alphabets and languages may not have an equivalent english form, so therefore google uses something in its place. Its also interesting because every now and then Google Translator gives you an anomaly, something that seems so bizarre you can't help but think that it is a mistake.

I decided to use the first few stanza's of the Raven because it is probably my all time favorite poem. The tone and the rythem of the poem are simply astounding.

I enjoyed how some of the phrases were changed. From "Darkness there, and nothing more" to "There are dark, no more, no less". It does alter the rythem of the poem, but at the same time it makes me chuckle. My favorite part of the translation, which is one of those bizarre parts from above is this part: from "rapping, rapping at my chamber door" to "gently rap, hip-hop music in my room door". It really illustrates the age of the language in the raven, as google translator thought that rapping referrred to hip-hop music. Its's these anomalies that make google translator an imperfect program (i.e. one you wouldn't trust to do translation home work with), but an interesting and amusing tool, that has created some very unqique versions of famous text.