[alboy]

It was also very common to write long messages in "translit" (substituting Latin letters for equivalent Cyrillic ones, e.g. ф -> f) back then here in Russia since you could fit in 160 characters using GSM 03.38 (7-bit encoding) instead of 70 characters with UCS-2 (UTF-16 encoded) and SMS messages were quite expensive.

[gck1]

Transliterated messages are still quite popular in Georgia (გამარჯობა, როგორ ხარ? > gamarjoba, rogor xar?), even in places where character limits don't apply. Which makes it practically impossible to use any translation services, as there are many ways to substitute a single letter or a sound, making reversing extremely hard. And if you add to the mix the poor quality of those translation services for Georgian language in general, you get texts that mostly make sense to just native speakers.