I understand completely?

So many good title options! Hard to choose one.

Besides "Chlorinated chickens," I could have gone with, "Do you wish macho technique of life?"

Or, "Gain a buildup of your intimate part."

You see my dilemma — an embarrassment of riches.

Every day I get more and more lost in translation on two social media fronts. One is the constant barrage of emails from people I'm supposed to believe are women wanting me for sex or marriage or both.

(Though, to take the starch out, I also receive a fair number of "Shawn! Save big on nursing bras of all types today!" emails.)

The other is from a German version of the facebook™® page I follow. Instead of "Did you swim today?" the page is "Bist Du heute schon geschwommen?"

I became a member of that page when a German member of the former created the latter and invited me. More swimmers corresponding worldwide = a good thing.

I click "like" when I can understand the translated German. The posts come with a link, and the online service Bing®™ Translator attempts to decode.

When I can't understand, I become the ugly American and find some of the translated posts unintentionally funny.

Please understand, I'm not making fun of Germans or German swimmers — only in how their perfectly grammatical German gets rammed through an online translator until it barely makes sense. It's out of their control.

I hope, for my sake, German swimmers are laughing at my English posts which I strive to write correctly.

Nor are the online sex come-ons funny, since the senders are at least phishing for my personal information and at worst really trafficking women and children online for sex.

But the emails' sultry sales pitches often appear to have originated in one language and have made their broken and twisted way into English. It's hard not to smirk.

Smile guiltily with me, won't you? First, let's do sex. I mean … well, you know what I mean.

These are verbatim, punctuation and all.

"Hello my good - I had a dream and you were in it. This dream I'll never forget because you are embodied in him all my secret desires! Waiting, write me! Lou I am your russian pussy — you remember my nickname?"

Is it Lou? Because I'm not Lou. Are you Lou? I'm confused.

"Hello - I now have their own web page - it contains all information about me, as well as photos - videos and information about what I like and dislike, as well as any man I like, you're 1 of those people who is right for me -- Come to me, kiss! Eunice"

Eunice, you haven't got a chance, and not because of the pronoun implosion. It's because here comes Kay:

"Hi - do you remember how we made love in your car? Mmm like it was perfect - the stars, moon, sky - and the lights of the city, here in Russia that does not happen again, I want you to come if you do not mind, write me! Kay" 

That must have been some time! I don't remember a thing about Russia.

Alfreda raised the bar, so to speak:

"Can I ask you? 'Was you ever have sex with a Russian girl? Would you like to try it?' I am now in America - a guy looking for dating and sex. Alfreda

See? Such convenience! Alfreda's not expecting me to head back to Russia. Not that I've ever been there! Although Alfreda may be a guy, which puts a different spin on the arrangement.

But just yesterday someone beat you all, ladies (or gentlemen):

This is Natka P. Pecora. I am in town. SHALL WE MEET Shawn? 

I don't have to tell you, the most attractive part of this come-on is — the middle initial. It's all the rage. I get enticements from Dulcie B. Oatridge, Halimeda V. Till and adelice w. simkulet, who saved all her capital letters to inform me 69% OF WOMEN ARE UNHAPPY WITH PARTNERS SIZE!

Being married is a big seller, apparently. Thus the urgent appeals from Mrs. Lusa Cremeens and DRUNK Mrs. Selena Toure who is ready to VISIT and PLEASE Shawn.

Since these ploys have not worked, some opt for just being direct. I could tell you just how frank, but your mind, as they say, is your most powerful sexual organ. Figure it out.

Then I get a lot of these. It's the same message, just from different admirers:

I found your profile via facebook. I was excited! You're cute! I want to share some hot photos with you babe! Got big boobs, a big butt … and know how to use them :)

Click bellow to view my (30) private photos

The number of photos differs from Daffy A. Yearick to Bobbe K. Bookwalter to Krysta V. Tamashiro.

The message is always in large purple letters, widely spaced, most of them English but some of them letters from other alphabets that look similar to English. In between them are a bunch of tiny white type characters, invisible on a mostly white email field, most of the characters nonsense; I guess they're supposed to create spacing.

I found them by accident, dragging my mouse across the message.

Some of the characters, though, are snippets of English sentences as if taken from a book. Several of them appear to be taken, for some reason, from the work of an online romance novelist named Judith Bronte — but not copied and pasted so much as loosely dictated by whoever was creating the phantom spacing.

Though English, they make no sense, such as, "Okay terry climbed onto the door Snyder had terry put her best," and "Two men are the doorbell."

If "two men are the doorbell" doesn't become a catchphrase, and soon, I'm going to be sad. 

Taken together, the snippets of invisible English make an odd poetry:

Stay put up her eyes emma.
Please josiah spoke with great grandpap
Laughed and each other side of trouble.
Surely he moved to make any food
Went back into blackfoot are my mind.

Something moved toward her work.

Friend and she understood the white.
Thought josiah brown for my husband.
What did it took hold of someone
Whatever you have more than any better.
Even though for they might do what
Because of how long while the shelter

Don't you agree? I mean, blackfoot are my mind.
 
OK, enough smut. Let's hit the pool.

Just like on my favorite facebook™® page "Did you swim today?" the German swimmers report their daily swims, ask each other advice, complain about clueless people in the pool — the usual. Only in German, translated for English consumption.

I'm not including names here because, again, I'm laughing at the translations, not at the posts. These also are verbatim, as translated.

Since online translators translate literally, without adjusting for the nuances of where verbs are placed in relation to nouns and pronouns, or detecting idioms, a post might sound like this:

someone said: you want to swim with no time to the 24-hour? clearly I wanted 

See? I sort of understand the meaning. Last-minute invitation for a big swim, eagerly agreed upon.

And I can follow this fairly well:

"pensioners". wag his finger, I heard only command tone "but we swim in the circle, Yes!
is boss clear. We make. Yes two. Christmas the celebration of love and tolerance. was fun nevertheless.

It's the common malady among pool swimmers on these two facebook©™ pages — lanes crowded with others who don't follow the customary swim pattern so that all may share. Here's another:

I find the class if the faster swimmer always must show one how horny they get the wheels turning and the legs directly in your face can - get a mind you while you wait to get it over (touch there is also no longer) :-(

I don't think that's what the swimmer said originally.

More pool problems:

There are now couples float in the float lifts. He with a flap bathing suit and she in a bikini. and after every 50m a kiss. Pfff... 

And I sort of get this, from one of a legion of swimmers who report on the distance swum:

Only 2500m. Then I gave up. Loud astray!
- Feeling annoyed.

Don't you really, really want to know what is meant by "loud astray?"

The gist comes through here, if not the actual meaning:

3 k. today without image, without swimming noodle and not feel real.
You all have it now it... otherwise it degenerates again from here. And I'm too old for such personalities, which quickly screwed after old joke.
Even on a holiday. 

I know, right?

When some posts don't quite make sense, such as this translated in Bing®™:

I cocks today. I just don't feel like!

I run it through Google®™ Translate and get this:

I skip today. Just have no time loss!

(I notice, by the way, that Google™ is asking users to help improve its service; maybe in time these won't be so funny anymore.)
 
Soon, though, I lost the thread of meaning completely:

In the General obsession with contemplation, I am considering "what I expect, if I don't expect anything? Nothing to be expected? Can expected non be disappointed expectations?"

I understand completely?

Translation coughs up odd phrases, some of them apparently mis-translations, such as:

Kardashian with 1/2 minute Pause...schnief, keuch... through the well fluid water. Good slip

"Kardashian" shows up a lot, and I'm guessing it's the translators' wan solution to translating "front crawl" in German. Maybe I should alert the Germans to this terrible affront.

"Brass hippo" is another phrase that comes up a lot, as in, "Brass hippo in a gloriously empty Ederberglandbad," and I'd love to know the meaning. So does "inner pig dog," which I determined is the urge to be lazy or procrastinate and not go for a swim.

"Chlorinated chickens" came up once; I think a clever swimmer used this phrase from the news — Europeans don't want U.S. chickens that have been dipped in a chlorine bath — to describe fellow pool swimmers. I think.

Whew! It feels so good to write this post, considering I've been collecting these translations for months. I have so many more, but like they say in show biz, "Always leave 'em wanting more."

Or as they say in German, translated through Bing®™:

nun again with renewed vigor and cool head in everyday life.

You know what I'm talking about.