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devoured a good book lately?

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This long-lost treasure is beginning to be rediscovered, mostly due to its appearance in Paul Collins' Sixpence House and its subsequent reissuing under Collins' "Collins' Library" imprint. In a nutshell it is an English phrase book for Portuguese speakers; the author, however, didn't speak a smack of English. He did, though, have a Portuguese to French dictionary, and a French to English dictionary. One can imagine the results. It includes such gems as:

Zombo deles; o meu navio e armado em guerra, tenho equipagem vigilante e animosa; e as municoes nao me faltam.

I jest of them; my vessel is armed in man of war, I have a vigilant and courageous equipage, and the ammunitions don't want me its.

Makes for great reading. Also for those who can't get enough, check out here where someone took the As She Is Spoke translation and compared it with the translation AltaVistata's Babelfish translator offers.