I am a self-employed professional translator who has been openly lampooning the YouTube
star Malinda Kathleen Reese for more than a whole year now, openly motivated to do so by
my own incredulity at what she enjoys for singing Google Translate-altered versions of songs
while I scrape a living getting translation right. That said, however, it is definitely not that I
hold her in nothing but withering contempt. Not only do I think that she really is, for what it’s
worth, a good singer capable of producing material of genuine creative merit (for anyone can
read out – or sing, in Malinda’s case – garbled Google Translate-altered content, expecting to
amuse people doing so) but she also created a video explaining how Google Translate works,
called “My Real Thoughts On Translation” on the channel Twisted Translations.
Put simply, I learned to take this woman’s YouTube videos in my stride a long time ago. One
such video is her Google Translate-altered version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, on her
Twisted Translations account. Well, like I said in the first paragraph, even I – as a
professional translator in 2023 – have to admit that she can say some definitive things about
Google Translate, and I’m sure she knows very well, just as I do, that it only continues to
improve over time. As this exercise demonstrates:
I put the lyrics of the first verse of Michael Jackson’s Thriller (the lyrics of the actual song)
through a number of subsequent languages on Google Translate, just as Malinda does every
time she creates a new Twisted Translations video (in this case: English to Danish to Turkish
to Latvian to Japanese to Korean to Italian to Khmer to Arabic to Norwegian, the finally back
to English). This is the output I got for it (in January 2023):
Around midnight
Evil lurks in the dark
In the moonlight
Watch a show that will make your heart stop
Want to scream
But horror captures the sound in front of you
I started to freeze
Fear of seeing with the eyes
You are paralyzed
Much as this is not a perfect reproduction by any means (e.g. “I started to freeze” should be
“You start to freeze”), this is, I believe, a firm sign that Google Translate only improves more
and more over time; certainly when you compare it to what Malinda sings for it in her video
of a Google Translate-altered version of this song. (Not that I know the specific list of
languages that Malinda put the same lyrics through in her creation of said video and in what
order; and, to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more than the number of languages
I put these lyrics through to get what I have reproduced above.)
Even so, Google Translate being what it has become today, it would seem that, these days,
one really has to go over the top to confuse Google Translate enough to get Google Translate-
altered translations of songs which may provide as much as amusement as any done by
Malinda…
Do you know who Andrew Huang is? Well, like Malinda, he’s a YouTube star in his own
right, and one of his best pieces of work (for me, anyway) is the song where he raps in five
languages (switching from one to another, even within individual sentences, if you can
believe that!). Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_F2ByljLtc
I was just wondering… it started with me creating a file containing all the lyrics of it in each
of the five languages – I paid someone in China to write out the Mandarin script for me.
Eventually I took the content of it to reproduce what he actually sang as he switched from
language to language i.e.
Come on! Come on! Comment ça va? How are you? This emcee wows
Fem språk, from “Buenos días” to 你好…
…and this is what I ran through Google Translate, in the same language combination as the
one I followed with my work with the lyrics to Thriller outlined above. The first step was that
I had Google Translate translate it from English to Danish, then translate the output of that
from French to Danish, then translate the output of that from Spanish to Danish, then
translate the output of that from Swedish to Danish, then translate the output of that from
Mandarin to Danish – so all five languages got covered – before translating all I was then left
with in Danish to Turkish to Latvian to Japanese to Korean to Italian to Khmer to Arabic to
Norwegian and then finally back to English.
Well, at the end of it all, I was left with this, in which a fair bit of the original has gone
(certainly compared to the output of the lyrics of Thriller put through this same string of
languages in the exercise I did above):
Allow! Allow! how do you feel? how do you feel? Wow server.
5 languages "Buenos Dias" – Hello
Who is the best trigger?
Training with hot flashes – training
How can I fix it now?
I don't know if you feel good about yourself?
It can be sharp and yellow
But she breathes fire…and beautiful hair
No one can do like Huang and no one can do like me.
I feel it a little faster and have it on a warm beach
No one can do like Huang and no one can do like me.
I feel it a little faster and have it on a warm beach
You can clearly see that you have a dark train.
Open it and let him hit the drum
On the other hand, this piece of shit doesn't have a microphone.
They drank and tried and failed
I easily passed them, they are cats, I am a dragon
I walked past them, it was a cat, I was a dragon
I easily passed them, they are cats, I am a dragon
I walked past them, it was a cat, I was a dragon
I decided to produce children's songs in the same four languages.
We're going to be cool this year and we're going to give you a lip balm
Forget it! Singing and singing
My sweet nectar leaves crazy rappers in their graves
Yellow kills everything in the hair
I don't know yet, another died prematurely
People say no.
To be honest, nothing is as crazy as this
About 16, drastic measures
My word is very good and it just sounds good.
No one can do like Huang and no one can do like me.
I feel it a little faster and have it on a warm beach
No one can do like Huang and no one can do like me.
I feel it a little faster and have it on a warm beach.
And you see, this is what I would love to see Malinda sing.