Being able to reparaphrase a sentence automatically with a computer could be a very useful tool for smoking plagiarism to cover your trail of sources. However, a more telling example of the limitations of computational linguistics and translation can be found in experimenting with Babelfish.

[1] take a passage in English and translate it to another language. Pass back and forth juggling the results between the two languages.

[2]take same passage and do a stir-fry by passing from one language to the next without reusing a language. Pass result back to original language.

Here is an example of [juggling] after 5 iterations of english to spanish and back

original phrase: When I ride a horse backwards, the view is what the horse chose to see. So what I see is what the horse has seen and not the reverse

result:When amount a horse the other way around, the vision is what the horse chose to see. What I see is so what it has seen the horse and not the misfortune

Here is an example of stir-fry] starting with same english passage, translating to german to french back to english 3 times

result:When amount A horse the OTHER way around, the vision is what the horse chose ton lake. What I lake is so what it has lakes the horse and emergency the misfortune

You can try this yourself at:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr

IBM has had a project looking to do this for a few years…

Oops, should always preview…