Hack idea: text effects

Guitar effects take a stream of audio, usually in real time, and modify it. Text effects would take a stream of written words and perform artful modifications.

Auto-translation is a text modification that isn’t about art.

• Input: Hello. I like you. You are a very good person.

• Output: Hola. Me gustas. Eres una muy buena persona.

Round-trip auto-translation would translate forward, then translate the translated text back. It would add a layer of weirdness.

If I send “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” from English through Somali, Latvian, Tajik, and back to English, I get “The best times were the worst times.“

Text effects and guitar effects could be chained together.

1. Talk into a mic
2. Speech to text
3. English to Somali to Latvian to Tajik to English
4. Text to speech
5. Distortion
6. Cathedral reverb

Joyful mayhem!