budd@arizona.UUCP (09/20/83)
While in Tokyo last September of the ICSE-6 conference I stopped in at the vendor booths and a fellow from the Michigan Institute of Psychosynthesis (of all places) had some advertising junk which just happened to have the story "SHI Shi shi shi shi" (by Zhao Yuan-ren). This is the short story (90 words) all of which are pronounced the same in Chinese. This means that rendered in Pinyin (a roughly phonentic representation) it reads as "Shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi shi,", etc. An english translation was also given, which started "Stone saloon songster Sir Shi squire seeking lions, swears savoring saw lions, squire spell setting site sights lions, saw spell, setting saw lions setting site such spell, setting Shi squire setting site, squire sights such saw lions, sharpened shafts stout, sends such saw lions succumb sod. ..." (I don't know chinese, but it must lose something in the translation) If whoever posted the original article about this story wants to send me a usmail address, i can xerox a copy of the ad (which also includes the ideographic mode, which for obvious reasons I can't transmit over the net) and mail it out. tim budd, univ of az, dept of cs. arizona!budd