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This is the classic party game "Telephone" (or "Chinese
Whispers") where instead of whispering the message to the
next player to keep others from hearing it, players say it in
different languages. Obviously, players must be
multilingual, and their languages must overlap such that
there can
be a chain of languages through the players.
For example, player one speaks English and Russian, player
two speaks Russian and Arabic, player three speaks Arabic,
Farsi, and Spanish, and player four speaks Spanish and
English. The message is translated from English to Russian,
then from Russian to Arabic, then from Arabic to Spanish,
and finally from Spanish back to English.
Actually, it would be better if all players speak some
common language (English in the example) in addition to
their individual languages, so that they can understand
how the message changes from beginning to end. You'd
still need whispering when the message's current language
is understood by players other than the one you're passing
it to.
To increase or decrease—I'm not sure—the mutation rate,
allow discussion between each pair of players so that the
meaning of the message is passed more accurately. On one
hand, this reduces mutation by mishearing, but on the
other, I think it could encourage mutation through
interpretive translation.
[link]
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So why did player three need to speak Farsi if he was the
only one :) |
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I like the idea about allowing conversation. That always
bothered me about the normal telephone game. It is
supposed to illustrate how fast information is corrupted
when rumors are passed around, but with rumors, they
are normally discussed and clarified. When a message is
said one time in a whisper, I suspect it is often lost due to
simple non-clarity. I also sometimes suspect that one
player changed the message on purpose just to be funny. |
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Telephone (or this game) really should be played as a
competition between two teams to see which transmits
the message most accurately. There should also be a
speed component. Judging whether the result is
"accurate enough" might be tricky. Maybe have the final
person write down the message as they heard it, then
choose from a multiple choice list of 7 messages that are
similar to the original. Each of the choices can have a
score, so messages with close to the same meaning are
more favorable. That way a team that gets the correct
answer can still lose if the other team gets an answer
with nearly the same meaning in much less time. |
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I like that competition idea. |
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