Process documentation
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About
Inspiration
Research
Experiments
Outcome
Notes
Behind the Screen
   Yiran Zhao IDCE MA Theis Documentation
The Beauty of Distortion: How Linguistic Dislocation Generates Visual Form

This project was inspired by a moment of confusion during a journey abroad—where the boundary of language dissolved, and misreading quietly emerged, turning text into a visual maze. A mobile translation app rendered absurd phrases with cold precision, but accidentally opened a door to poetic imagination. Misaligned language was no longer a failure, but a surreal entry point into humor and wonder.

One striking case: a German cafeteria menu was translated as “vegetarian gyroscope.” The phrase conjured images of spinning vegetables and mechanical salads—absurd, yet strangely vivid. This moment revealed how mistranslation can generate rich visual potential.

Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s concept of “pure language,” Derrida’s différance, and Amelia Walker’s idea of “chaotic translation,” this project explores the creative power of mistranslation in visual and spatial contexts. HGK Basel’s multilingual campus became the stage for this exploration. Misread signs were transformed into collages, typographic experiments, and site-specific projections, each reflecting the layered complexity of cross-cultural language flow.

Focusing on four campus sites—All Welcome WC, The Half-Open Door, Elektro, and der Tank—the project reimagines spatial misreadings through image-making. Absurd translations gave rise to new, uncanny scenes: a toilet open to all creatures; a crying floor beneath an elephant; a forgotten electric lab; a bunker-like art space. These images were projected back into their real locations, inviting viewers to experience the poetry of misreading.

Rather than correcting error, this work celebrates it—as a lens to rethink translation, perception, and the beauty of not fully understanding.

Pratical Centered Master Thesis
Yiran Zhso
01.Inspiration
Inspired by everyday life
When I first arrived in Switzerland, it wasn’t the roads that tripped me up—it was the language. Without any script I could call my own, I felt my way through daily life with a photo-translation app: reliable one moment, ridiculous the next—an ordinary lunch rendered as a “vegetarian gyroscope.” From supermarket shelves to campus signs, I learned to hesitate through one misreading after another—discovering that the uncertainty of living abroad can begin with something as simple as a menu.



Menu from HGKMistranslation in life


Pirated movie subtitles
02.After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation

George Steiner
Press: Oxford University Press
English
1998Publication

ISBN: 0192880934
196.9 x 129 x 2.97 mm

Inspiration: Provided the classic assumptions of stable, transferable meaning; I use this to stage the contrast with contemporary, ambiguity-embracing practice.
The Translator's Invisibility

George Steiner
Press: Routledge
English
2017Publication

ISBN: 1138093165


Inspiration: Provided the classic assumptions of stable, transferable meaning; I use this to stage the contrast with contemporary, ambiguity-embracing practice.
  “What is franchissement? … and what’s poetry got to do with it?” 


Amelia Walker
English
Last accessed: 24 July
2025
Blogs 

https://axonjournal.com.au/issues/9-1/what-franchissement-and-whats-poetry-got-do-it/

Inspiration: Provided the classic assumptions of stable, transferable meaning; I use this to stage the contrast with contemporary, ambiguity-embracing practice.
 Of Grammatology

Motilal Banarsidass Publications
English
2002 Publication

ISBN: 8120811879


Inspiration: Grounded my thesis that all translation is a kind of misreading; semantic slippage is intrinsic and creatively exploitable.  
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections
Walter Benjamin
Mariner Books Classics
English
2019Publication

ISBN: 978-1328470232


Inspiration: Recast translation as creation (freeing “pure language”), legitimating my claim that “betrayal” can reach deeper truths and fuel image-making.  
“LOVE.ABZ and the Task of the Machine Translator” Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation

Otso Huopaniemi
2017Performance

Inspiration:A key practice case showing algorithmic errors as performative material; informed my chain from text error → visual form → spatial staging.
Pink Noise

Hsia, Yü
2007
Book Design


Inspiration: Modeled how machine loops deform language and how material choices (e.g., transparent film) shift attention from meaning to visual form—core to my image strategy. 
Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of
Untranslatable Words from Around the World*

Sanders, Ella Frances
2014Publication/Illustation

ISBN: 978-1607747109

Inspiration: Case vocabulary of the untranslatable that helped me articulate prompt-types and public-facing references for viewers unfamiliar with source languages.
 Translation Error

Minderytė, Donata
2019Paints

Inspiration: A precedent for language → image conversion; sharpened my question about the semiotic rules when a mistranslated word becomes composition/color/form.  

 03Experiment 1Text/language experiment (semantic drift driven by machine translation)

Purpose: Observe how misreading/drift arises at the textual level and assess its feasibility for conversion into visual language; derive operational mis-translation patterns. 


Conclusion: Purely relying on machine-translation “accidents” is unstable and inefficient: many runs return overly accurate outputs with no error, while others devolve into unusable or uninteresting noise. This motivated a shift from waiting for chance to systematizing reusable error types and triggers.




1. Culture-specific vocabulary: Starting from “鱼香茄子,” multi-step cross-language machine translation drifted through “sweet fish rice” to “Fried chinken rice,” with the core “eggplant” vanishing—showing category shifts and recombined culinary imagery.
1/2    Minimalism in Germany: The Sixties, Hatje Cantz
 2. Emotional expressions: “I’m hungry” quickly morphed into “What are you talking about?” / “You have a family” / “I’m just a child,” indicating that affective sentences are fragile and prone to re-framing as relationship/identity statements.
3. Description → image linkage: Feeding progressively re-translated prompts like “a cat” into image generation: language moved from concrete to technical abstraction, and images degraded from a yellow cat to inanimate geometry—i.e., language abstraction → visual de-animation.
A working set of seven misreading types (literal translation, syntactic inversion, semantic shift, cultural mismatch, typo-based misreading, homophone confusion, visual-driven misunderstanding) to act as operational prompts for later visual work.  




Experiment 2From Linguistic Drift to Visual Generation
Purpose: Translate linguistic drift into images and find a generation path that is isomorphic to mis-translation while preserving openness. The trigger case was a menu item VEGANER GYROS mis-translated into “vegetarian gyroscope,” which sparked strong visual associations.  


Next step: Establish AI as the primary image pipeline; convert outputs into short video loops and project them back into HGK sites (All Welcome WC, The Half-Open Door, Elektro, der Tank) to test on-site interactions among image, space, and audience. 






Method comparison & takeaways:


1. Collage: Mechanic parts + vegetarian ingredients in a literal combinatory approach; result felt over-designed, tending toward a single reading. 

2. Typography: Letterform rotation/paths to express dislocation; proved too controlled, lacking the “irrational energy” of mistranslation. 


3. AI generation (MidJourney): Its pattern-matching structure mirrors machine mistranslation and yields an illusion of materiality (convincing texture/light/volume), preserving absurdity while making the “impossible” appear credible—best suited to carry semantic drift and pave the way for spatialization.  





KÄSESPÄTZLI mit Kartoffeln, Speck und Röstzwiebeln
kleiner Wildkräutersalat: Hand-splashed matter, accompanied by potatoes, bacon, fried onions, and a small portion of wild greens salad




ZATAR POULET mit Gewürzreis kleiner Beilagensalat:
A screaming chicken, served with spices and side dishes.



SOJA GESCHNETZELTES FÜRSTER ART: Soybean Strawberry First Art



SCHWEINSGESCHNETZELTES GYROS ART; Pork Chop Gyro Kebab



VEGANER GYROS mit Lyoner Kartoffeln an Joghurt Dip
kleiner Beilagensalat:  Vegetarian Gyroscope



SCHWEINSGESCHNETZELTES GYROS ART: Blue Ribbon Pork Roll



MAROKKANISCHES ZAALOUK: Moroccan Hall




Experiment 3



Experiencing Mistranslation in Space
Purpose: Test whether images derived from misreadings can, in dialogue with concrete sites, produce situated viewing; assess how “real/imagined” layers reshape spatial feeling and audience response; validate the full pipeline from AI image to spatial presentation.


Content:
1. Site & material prep: Select four HGK locations—All Welcome WC, The Half-Open Door, Elektro, der Tank—and conduct on-site photography. During generation, use Midjourney’s image reference and Omni-Reference to embed real spatial elements, building a site-rooted realism from which an estranged ambience can emerge.
2. Generation & medium: Convert key stills into 9–13-second video loops and project them at ultra-high resolution; the short duration serves immediacy of perception and sustains visual intensity.
3. Intervention modes & scenes: Directly project onto the white façades of All Welcome WC, The Half-Open Door, and Elektro; at der Tank, use a raised fabric screen as a temporary surface, layering the building’s exterior with an imagined interior.
4. Documentation & circulation: Photograph and film each intervention to preserve the moments when images briefly inhabit the site, allowing audiences to re-encounter these “translated spaces” through mediated records.








1. All Welcome WC This was the first space I explored. Since I wasn’t yet familiar with Midjourney at that early stage, I tried a wide range of approaches to make the space read increasingly like a real place.
2. The Half-Open DoorThis is an unmarked door at civic. One day it was opened; inside, the cavernous space held nothing but a single line of text and a small icon—an image that instantly set my imagination racing.
3. Elektro I’ve never been inside, so I can only rely on translation and imagination to picture what the space might be like.



 4. der Tank This is a very large exhibition space, and when I first arrived at the university, I was completely puzzled by its name—I had no idea what this place was for.












Space exploration Finally, I explored how the images could interact with real spaces through spatial intervention. I used projection techniques and filmed the scenes on site, then edited the footage into a video.



≈
04.Outcome
1. Animating the generated images visualizes the instability of misreading — meanings never stay still.

















2.  Video
05.Notes
 These are some reflections and notes from my overall process.


1. Miro Board
2. Figma




3. HandwrittenNotes
06.Behind the Screen
 Some interesting observations and reflections.


This was by no means an easy project for me. Interdisciplinary topics are always tricky—it’s hard to pin down a clear academic conclusion within a single framework. I initially chose this theme out of personal interest, but approaching it through a rigorous academic lens introduced unexpected constraints. Still, it became an exciting and profound challenge. You never know what’s around the corner until you get your hands dirty, and through rounds of experimentation, I stumbled upon outcomes I never anticipated.


Though I believe I could have pushed it even further, I made peace with working within the limits of what was realistically possible. I don’t see this topic as mine alone—it speaks to concerns shared by many people today. I’m now approaching it with a more open mindset, but the deeper I dig, the clearer it becomes that this isn’t just a linguistic issue—it’s entangled with deeper societal structures. I hope more people will take interest in this subject in the future.