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!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *