Word Soup by Superluminal Pachyderm

Word Soup is the eleventh studio album of the progressive rock project called Superluminal Pachyderm, created back in 1999 by Ken Robinson. If you're interested in music that "isn't quite right," then you've come to the right place.

About the concept:
Back in 1855, a gentleman named Pedro Carolino wrote a book called “O novo guia da conversação, em Portuguez e Inglez” and intended it to be a Portuguese-English conversational guide and phrase book. The book was published by Parisian publisher J.-P. Aillaud, Monlon & Co. Obviously it seems odd that this album would be based upon an ordinary phrase book for Portuguese speakers to learn English, but this book isn't by any means ordinary.

It is widely believed that Pedro Carolino could not speak English. He apparently used a French-English dictionary to translate an earlier Portuguese-French phrase book, “O novo guia da conversaçao em frances e portugues,” written by José da Fonseca. In fact, Carolino added Fonseca's name to the 1855 edition, either to give Fonseca credit or as an attempt to give his book some credibility. While this may seem harmless, it is Carolino's indiscriminate use of literal translation that resulted in this book being a classic source of unintentional humor in translation.

Carolino's book was later published in London in 1883 under the title “English as She is Spoke.” An American edition was also published in 1883 with an introduction by Mark Twain. The book also inspired a number of spoofs over the years.

Word Soup is dedicated to Carolino's work and has extracted phrases and used the text of three dialogues to make up the lyrics of this album. In some ways, what Carolino did was a precursor to what many have used Google Translate for during its early years when translations across multiple languages resulted in some bizarre results. And Carolino did this over 150 years before Google Translate was launched.

Superluminal Pachyderm is an experimental progressive rock project created by Ken Robinson in 1999.

xaagma.com