Conversion Miss Bot

Note: This bot was retired on April 4, 2017.

@henkanmisu is a bot I made that generates the kind of nonsense Japanese words you'll come up with when input conversion goes wrong. Some examples with the original algorithm, keeping in mind the words on the left are normal and the ones on the right don't really make sense:

読図 → 独呪 (reading a map -> solitary curse)
断面 → 断免 (cross-section -> cutting off permission)
三日月 → 御蚊月 (crescent moon -> mosquito moon)
呪文 → 株問 (curse -> stock question)

The inspiration for this bot is one day at work when I was working on a report screen in a webapp, typed in "ちょうひょうがめん" and got "超氷河麺" (ultra glacier noodles) instead of "帳票画面" (report screen).

Until recently it worked something like this:

1. Pick a random entry from EDICT
2. Break it down into per-kanji readings
3. For each kanji, replace it with a Jouyou kanji with the same reading

Unfortunately the results were often too weird to be funny, so I recently tried a new strategy.

1. Pick two two-letter words (hopefully jukugo) from a dictionary and append them
2. Replace the first and last kanji with other kanji with the same reading
3. Replace the middle two kanji with a single word with the same reading

Some example output from that:

欣懐両党 きんかいりょうとう 筋改良糖
(very happy / both parties) -> (muscle improvement sugar)
心外殖財  → ( しんがいしょくざい ) →  診外食細
(regrettable moneymaking) -> (examine eating out thin)
満期子房  → ( まんきしぼう ) →  漫起死貌
(full-term ovary) -> (playful (?) saving-from-the-brink-of-death form)

Hopefully this will make the results more amusing. Ψ