Research Paper Spot: Translating into English

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Yesterday, I praised the Research Paper Spot (RPS) essay mill service for their clever business strategy of offering papers written so poorly as to be indistinguishable from the poorly written papers that students themselves actually write. One of my colleagues, however, has pointed me to a sentence in the RPS advertisement that slightly alters my opinion:

In order to serve you at crest and in order reduce every single inch of skeptics we ensure you with . . .

This is worse than the writing of actual students. It doesn't even sound quite like English! I therefore suggest that the RPS professionals have gone too far in their laudable aim of writing badly.

Now, suppose that you're a student who's already purchased a research paper from RPS, and you realize that the paper is too poorly written to be credible. What do you do? Despite the RPS guarantee, you're unlikely to get your money back or to obtain a perceptibly better written paper, so I suggest that you translate the paper into slightly better English. Not good English, of course, for that would defeat the aim of fooling your professor. Just a bit better so that you don't fail the course.

Naturally, you won't wish to waste your valuable time translating the paper yourself. You'll want to use an online service . . . like Google Translate. By way of demonstration, let's again take the sentence in question:

In order to serve you at crest and in order reduce every single inch of skeptics we ensure you with . . .

Let's now use Google Translate to turn it into German and then back into English to see if a better sentence emerges:

To serve you to comb and to reduce every single centimeter of skeptics we are sure that you are with . . .

Note that the unit of measurement has been reduced from the inch to the centimeter -- a more global standard of skepticism, to be sure, and Kilomètres Deboutish would stand proud, even if Quentin Tarantino might be royally put out -- but the sentence is not appreciably improved. Let's take this new version and try the same Germanic trick again:

In order to serve you and to comb every single centimeter of the skeptics, we are sure that you cut with . . .

Grooming your skeptical professor in simian fashion might work wonders . . . but there may actually be some post-summer-of-love rule against that sort of teacher-student interaction at your university, so let's try this newer version and go the Germanic route again:

In order to serve you and for every single inch of the skeptics comb, we are sure that you cut. . .

That sounds a bit worse, just too ironic an inch Teutonic, actually, so I'd suggest either you either go 'ape-shite' or try a different language than German at this juncture. Take this newest version, and translate it into, say, Korean and back:

Comb every single inch in order for the skeptics, we cut you make sure you provide . . .

I suspect that your professor won't appreciate the implied physical threat in this one. Let's go back a step and try through Chinese:

In order to meet you and skeptical per inch of comb, and we believe you qualify . . .

Believe? Merely believe?! You better know that your professor qualifies! Go back a step, and try through Hebrew:

To serve you for every inch of the comb skeptics, we're sure that you cut . . .

Hmmm . . . "comb skeptics" . . . . Rather intriguing to imagine skeptics who disbelieve in the existence of combs. But your professor might be a comb believer, and you won't want to alienate the one who'll be grading 'your' paper. Go back a step, and try now through Arabic:

In order to serve you and every single inch of comb skeptical, and we are sure that you cut . . .

Very close in wording to what we arrived at through the Hebrew route. I think that the Israelis and the Palestinians are close to an agreement! There's just that disagreeable inch between "skepticism" and "skeptical," but a road map might get us through that remaining distance, given sufficient time, a measure of good will, and a series of trust-building procedures.

But I'm getting into geopolitics here, which goes far beyond my original purpose, and you surely see by now what to do in your own attempt at ever-so-slightly tweaking that anglically challenged RPS paper to make it look like something in English that you yourself might have written.

By way of reminder, let's summarize. Take your paper. Use Google Translate. Pick the language of your choice. Experiment. Enjoy.