Enough to make a difference

Ushguli, Upper Svaneti region, Georgia, via Travel Promotions Georgia.

Something else you can do with Google Translate—invite them to translate a particularly boring piece of Chinese text (from the magazine Renmin Yinyue/People's Music, April 2016). But don't tell them the text is in Chinese. Tell them it is, for instance, in Georgian. The results are exotic in the extreme:

And when he had taken the rest of the soul
into the lake of fire,
and set it in order upon the four winds,
for the sake of the rest of the world,
it is not enough to make a difference
in the quality of the arts.

The first three Chinese characters in this remarkable performance aren't in the Chinese text, and the rest are its last sentence. A more conventional English version would have no souls, lakes of fire, or making a difference; it might read,

In the 30-odd years since the beginnings of the Reform and Opening Up policy, popular music in China has not only followed an accelerated development from recovery through prosperity to excess, but also constantly readjusted its own cultural direction in line with the ongoing social transformations. As a special field for cultural functioning and interpretation, popular music necessarily reflects the dialectical unity of politics, economy, and culture, and its form is the result of negotiation and compromise among all participating forces. The present article offers some critical commentary on popular music in precisely this context.

or, in Google Translatese,

Reform and opening up more than 30 years, pop music not only experienced from the recovery to the rise to the excess of the acceleration of the development process, and with the pace of social transformation, but also constantly adjust their own cultural direction. As a specific space for cultural operation and interpretation, pop music necessarily reflects the unity of unity of social politics, economy and culture, and its form "is the result of a negotiation and compromise of all participating forces." Therefore, the understanding of popular music should also be political, economic specific structure as the basic context. This article is in this context of the popular music were commented.

And the original Chinese text, if you want to try it yourself,

改革开放三十多年，流行音乐不仅经历了从复苏到兴盛再到过剩的加速度发展过程，而且伴随社会转型的步伐，也不断调整着自身的文化方向。作为文化运作和阐释的特定空间，流行音乐必然反映社会政治、经济和文化等多方面的对立统一关系，其形式“是一个所有参与势力谈判和妥协的结果”。因此，对流行音乐的认识也应以政治、经济的特定结构为基本语境。本文正是在这样的语境下对流行音乐进行了评论。

The same text translated from the Dravidian language Kannada reminds you a little of the Eliot of the Four Quartets period:

The transition to the three-and-a-half years,
the 行 音乐 历, is the result of more and more
of the excessive transparency of the transition, as well as
the theoretical transformation of the transit.....
Therefore, to the extent that the word of the word
is derived from the words of the word,
and the principle of the law.
This is the language of the word
spoken to you by the words of the song.

I could tell you how I happened to learn about this, but I'd probably have to kill you.