One of my favourite requests for help online comes from the shibboleth-users group, where someone Japanese used machine translation to ask about the following problem:

At often, the goat-time install a error is vomit. To how many times like the wind, a pole, and the dragon? Install 2,3 repeat, spank, vomit blows

[edu.internet2.middleware.shibboleth.common.config.profile.JSPErrorHandlerBeanDefinitionParser:45]
Parsing configuration for JSP error handler.

Not precise the vomit but with aspect similar, is vomited concealed in fold of goat-time lumber? goat-time see like the wind, pole, and dragon? This insult to father’s stones? JSP error handler with wind, pole, dragon with intercourse to goat-time? Or chance lack of skill with a goat-time?

Please apologize for your stupidity. There are a many thank you

I have long wanted to figure out exactly how this went so wrong. Some parts are fairly clear:

• vomit could come from throw (as in throwing an error) or even just output.
• lumber must clearly reference logs.

I have also heard speculation that goat-time means runtime, as in the Java runtime, perhaps. This means we can already figure out how we got to “vomited concealed in fold of goat-time lumber” – it’s an error hidden in the runtime logs.

I asked a few llms to assist me with the rest, and they universally think spank is an odd translation of hit, which is apparently used in Japanese to mean something like execute, and skill could be a mistranslation of experience.

We can start to put together what the message actually means.

Often when trying to install the runtime an error is thrown. uninterpretable I have tried reinstalling it three times, but when I run it an exception is thrown.

This is not the exact exception but something like that. Is the real error hidden in the runtime logs? uninterpretable. uninterpretable arising due to interaction with the runtime? Or perhaps my lack of experience with the runtime?

The llms diverge on the meaning of “insult to father’s stones”. Some suggest the obvious thing, that it’d correspond to an idiomatic expression of frustration. Others seem to think it might be about “problems with the ancestral building blocks”, i.e. software dependencies. I liked that reading, but I have no idea.

Then there’s “the wind, a pole, and the dragon.” I have yet to see anything come close to a reasonable answer. llms produce guesses referring to three parts of the configuration, variable names, dependencies, colloquialisms, descriptions of user interface, or abstract descriptions of how quickly things happen (the wind), a fixed point (a pole), and complexity/power (dragon). But again, I have no idea.

If you have more information, please reach out.

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This article has triggered a lot of discussion, and I’ve plucked out the best I’ve read. I have not been able to take the time to ask how everyone wants to be credited so they are anonymous by default. Let me know how you want me to cite your contribution and I will!

• Perhaps the most likely guess is that the entire question is an intentional joke that has gone multiple round-trips through machine translation in order to mangle it real bad, and there’s no point in trying to decode it. I think this might well be the case but I pretend it’s not so.
• One person has made connections between “wind, pole, dragon” and “defaults, limits, flags”. This would imply the question is about whether the software is correctly configured. These are very tenuous connections though, and other people disagree.
• One person reasoned that “wind, pole, dragon” must be a single term that got broken up into three words, because it shows up in the same order multiple times. They think the term that lead to this is “Windows” and some version signifier. I.e. that this question is about installing on a Windows server.
• I have heard a guess, through one possible transliteration, that “wind, pole, dragon” could be a mistranslation of a phoentic rendering of the military expression fubar, i.e. fucked up beyond all recognition.
• One Japanese person confirmed that “wind” can refer to something happening suddenly, while “dragon” could be something unexpected.

Yeah, I don’t think we’ll ever know what really happened. But it’s fun to hear your speculation!