Okay, this is not even marginally connected to Tolkien collecting, but I wanted to share anyways. There is a website called translationparty.com where you type in a sentence in English, and it continually translates to Japanese, back to English, back to Japanese, etc. until you hit "equilibrium" (where the sentence no longer changes from the quirks in the translation engine, which happens to be Google's).

As an example (and to keep this vaguely on topic), I put in

When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

The result I got back is

Bilbo's birthday party, the first major project, a special Baggins, the back-end eleventy Hobbiton is excited to celebrate.

Sounds like the kind of prose I would use! (I have about that much writing talent, compared to the Professor.)

Here is the link for this particular "Translation Party".

http://translationparty.com/tp/#792602