By John Schwartz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 8, 2000; Page C01

This time the software industry has Gone Too Far. The latest feature isn't a bug, it's a crime against humanity. It's a word processor with an integrated Swedish-English translator. I mean, do we want Liv Ullmann to be translated into Mary Tyler Moore? We do not.

Oh sure, using "Tolken99" (http://www.tolken99.com) starts off fun. It's like playing with any really intriguing tool--a power drill or a nail gun, for example. You just want to use it on everything. My first try was simple: a line I'd learned to hammer out in every language I'd ever attempted. "I have a blue pencil." After clicking the "translate" function, I got this:

Jag har en bl penna.

Looks good to me! This translation droid of course is not the first one on the market; just the most frighteningly exotic one I've come across. Now I am hungry for more. I throw every Swedish word I know at the machine. This consists, however, mainly of statements by the Swedish chef on "The Muppet Show." Sadly, it's a disappointment.

His trademark exclamation:

Bork bork bork!

Translates into:

Bork bork bork!

This must be why, in the past, I have preferred the "dialectizer" service at www.rinkworks.com/dialect, which will turn any phrase into the argot of "redneck," Elmer Fudd, Swedish Chef and more: I hefe-a a blooe-a penceel.

Time to up the ante. I fed in some English lyrics by the Swedish superstars Abba.

Out popped the translation:

Du ar Dansande Drottningen, ung och sot, bara sjutton

Dansande Drottningen, kanna sl frn tamburin

Du kan dansa, du kan jive, har tiden av din liv

Se att flicka, klocka att scenen, grava ner/grava sig ner Dansande Drottningen

See how exotic and mysterious they seem? It's only mildly more so when you translate them back into English:

You're Dancing Queen, young and sweet, just seventeen

Dancing Queen, feel beat from tambourine

You can dance, you can jive, have the time of your life

See that girl, clock that scene, dig down/dig in Dancing Queen

Vistas are opening up before me: I will finally understand the product names in the Ikea catalogue!

All those evocative words that have always left me wondering--pop them into the translator and voila! That "Klinga" plastic storage box? The word means "blade." The cardboard version, "Knep"? The program tells me it really means "work around." That "Ogla" chair is a "loop" chair, and the "Poang" bouncy armchair's name means "points." That "Kolon" carpet protector? Yep: "colon." Go figure.

That, you see, is the problem--what Tom Stoppard calls "The flaw in the ointment." (Spricka i salva.) This is a program for the global economy, in which everyone is part of one big business transaction. We all talk to each other effortlessly and any of our cultural differences are neatly ironed away. It makes Sweden as accessible as Lubbock--and no more interesting.

This must be stopped.

I want differences, oddness--the notion that if we go to a faraway northern land, it will be at least a tiny bit exotic. The world ought to be different, dammit, ought not to be homogenized and sanitized for our protection. I don't want what singer Randy Newman joked about in his song "Political Science":

"Every city, the whole world round

Will just be another American town."

("Varje stad, hela varld runt

Kommer att bara vara en annan Amerikansk stad.")

The Swedish Chef is funny because we're not supposed to understand him; Swedish blue movies were exotic because they came from someplace . . . else. The powers that be want to take the mystery out of the world, to make it a Small World After All. And they must be stopped.

Keep your Lexus and your Olive Tree. We want our mystery back.

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