Here is an experiment to do at home.
1. Take 150 words either written by or about Derrida.
2. Using AltaVista’s Babel fish, Translate them from English to French, then from French to German, then back to English.
3. What comes back is no more or less complete gibberish than what you started with. Clearly the translation service is better than it used to be.
Before:
“Derrida seeks to destabilize these inherited assumptions. We think, therefore we question, he counters. Even Plato’s own thinking contains such challenges to it’s own theses.”
After:
“The research work of Derrida d