Web Video / Twisted Translations

aka: Google Translate Sings

The premise of the series, as described by The Beatles and Google Translate.

"What do you think would happen if song lyrics were translated back and forth between multiple languages using only an online translation software?"

— The premise of the series, as described by Malinda Kathleen Reese

Twisted Translations (originally Google Translate Sings, and then Translator Fails) is a web series created by Malinda Kathleen Reese in which she takes songs by famous artists, runs the lyrics through several languages in Google Translate and back into English until they barely resemble the original text, and then performs the song with the new lyrics. Hilarity Ensues.

The series has grown since it started, and Malinda now often dresses up as the characters she portrays, and sometimes incorporates location shooting in her videos. Many videos also features other YouTubers in singing parts. As of July 15th 2014, viewers can now contribute to the show by submitting their own bad translations to Malinda. Occasionally, they will translate things that aren't songs, such as instructions and poems. In December 2020 the channel was rebranded Twisted Translations and expanded to include collaborator Tom McGovern. On February 2024, during a video commemorating the 10th anniversary of the channel, Malinda stated that, while she's still open to the idea of doing more videos, she feels that the series is more or less "complete," citing how how the improvement of translation technology has made it harder to make the translations as funny as before, as well as a general desire to focus on her original work.

The series can be found here.

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Translator Fails provides examples of:

• Accidental Misnaming: Translation often gets characters' names wrong.
  • Elphaba calls Glinda "Glitter" in For Good. Later, in Defying Gravity, she calls her "Greenda." This seems to be a common problem in Oz, given that What Is This Feeling has the other students call Glinda "Garinda".
  • Glinda has her revenge in Popular where she calls Elphaba "Elf baba" and "Miss Elfava".
  • Take Me or Leave Me has Maureen calling Joanne "Lynette."
  • Mary from Mary Had a Little Lamb is randomly referred to as "Sarah" at one point.
  • Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer is referred to as both "Walldorf" and "Rudolpeueul." While Santa Claus is called "Santa Fe" or "Grandpa Frost" ^note The equivalent of Santa Claus in Russia (and other Slavic countries) is called Дед Мороз (Ded Moroz), which literally translates to "Grandfather Frost". Also, Dasher gets called "Warner" and Dancer gets called "Dance Lady", while Vixen is referred to as "Fox", Cupid as "Cupidon", Donner as "Donor" and Blitzen as "Sparkle".
  • In "You're Welcome", Maui seems to think Moana's name is "Cecilia".
  • In "This is Halloween," the titular line becomes "State of Arizona." And this town of Halloween becomes the "City of San Jose".
  • Malinda herself has been called "Malanda", "Melinda", "Lovely Foot", and "Marlow eggs".
  • In "Mother Knows Best", Mother Gothel calls Rapunzel "Lettuce"^note this is because the plant "rapunzel", which the original fairy tale character was named after, is also called "lamb's lettuce".
  • The name Delilah naturally comes up a lot in "Hey There Delilah", and it's never translated the same way twice: some are moderately close ("Dolly", "Daril"), others less so ("Barry Delida" ^note  Admittedly it seems like it was "hey there" that somehow got translated into "Barry" and the rest is fairly close, "Yummy Yummy")
  • Google Translate somehow turns Alexander Hamilton into both Alexander Lukashenko and Hamilton Alaska.
  • The narrator of "My Name Is" is apparently named Al, but two other characters first guess his name is "Bongo" or "Soup".
  • Pepa refers to her brother Bruno as "Ryan" in "We Don't Talk About Bruno."
• Actually Quite Catchy: In "Google Translate Sings "Never Gonna Give You Up" By Rick Astley", Malinda is at first annoyed that she got Rick-Rolled through Google Translate. However, by the end she starts singing along with the song, catching herself for a second, but then shrugging and going over to dance and sing along as the video ends.
• Adaptational Badass: I Don't Care's singer now says "We can control the lightning chain!"
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Google Translated "Be Prepared" turns Scar from a sociopathic Big Bad who wants to kill his brother into a Reasonable Authority Figure who is willing to starve for his subjects, promises the height of living conditions, interesting new products, religious educators, disease control code, knows that there is a problem in Latin America and is even humble about becoming a king. If only he wasn't a Cloud Cuckoolander who always wanted to be a taxi…
  • In "Hellfire", Frollo admits to his criminal neglect of the Middle East and Africa, and notes that he improved their oil supply (though he had to use Satanic power to do so). Depending on how you interpret the last line, he may even be helping Esmerelda hide from the authorities.
  • A slight example in "Mother Knows Best", in which Mother Gothel admits that she understands parents are supposed to be supportive.
  • Ramses decides to let the Jews go in "The Plagues" after being told "Come on!"
  • While Ling isn't villainous, he cut poverty in his school gymnasium, giving himself a thumbs up.
  • Maui does not imprison Moana in a cave at the end of "You're Welcome"; he just leaves in the boat, calling back to her that he loves her, while she looks on from the beach.
• Adaptational Jerkass: The Genie in "Friend Like Me", who seems to be mocking Aladdin's lack of friends because the Genie's girlfriend likes him.
• Adaptational Modesty: In the music video for Wrecking Ball, Miley Cyrus is fully nude. In the GTS version, Malinda is fully clothed.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: The villagers in "Belle" don't say anything rude or judgmental and come off as a bunch of fun goofballs.
• Adaptational Skimpiness: Done for Shawn Mendes, in which the translated lyrics now state that the singer has no clothes and Malinda duly lacks clothing. Censored, naturally.
• Adaptational Villainy: "For the First Time in Forever" suggests that Anna is planning to kill everyone upon taking power. This could be seen as an extreme revenge on her subjects for having passed a "discrimination law" against Elsa.
• Air Quotes: In the Mary Poppins medley, "Mary makes your heart so light" from "Jolly Holiday" is translated to "Mary illuminates your "eat"", with Bert doing air quotes on the last word.
• The Alcoholic: Google Translate has a tendency to mention wine in inappropriate times.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Gender-flipped example. In "Love is an Open Door", Hans claims to love Anna when she's crazy.
• Alternate History: I'll Make A Man Out Of You is about a Chinese-Hungarian war, apparently.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: "Google Translate Explains Evolution" mentions a clan of hot pink wolves.
• Amusing Injuries:
  • In "Beauty and the Beast", Brian burns himself on Lumiere while trying to boorishly pound on the table and shouts, "I am burning!".
  • In "Google Translate Makes Dinner", some cheese is injured and the humour comes from the sheer ludicrousness of the idea.
  • In the plane instructions video, Malinda burns herself on the ceiling in the line "the ceilings are hot".
• Anachronism Stew: Some lyrics mention technologies such as email and the internal combustion engine when they haven't been invented in-universe. Lampshaded in "You'll Be Back", where King George III gets confused after singing about airplanes. (Interestingly enough, he doesn't seem to be confused about the "flying machines" mentioned earlier in the song.)
• And That's Terrible: "Child trafficking! Honey, I am very angry!"
• Angrish: Elsa is too furious to speak properly in "Let It Go", if the line "Let us very angry!" is any indication.
• Anthropomorphic Personification:
  • Pocahontas, who claims that she is also a land.
  • Also in the '90s songs medley, Malinda claims that Barbie is a Barbie globe.
  • Galinda claims to be a sandal in "Popular".
  • Scar claims to finally be a taxi in "Be Prepared".
  • Taylor Swift becomes a TV in "Look What You Made Me Do"
  • In “bad guy”, Malinda (as Billie Eilish) claims that “Food is a person”. Cue Malinda as Food...
• Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?: SIRI seems to be surprisingly self-aware.
  Malinda: "You are a depressed banana I met."'
  SIRI: "I am?"
  Malinda: "Yep."
  SIRI: "That's what I thought."
• Artistic License – Geography: "We found Spain near China", in Google Translate Sings bad guy. It’s possible Spain disappeared from where it is in Real Life and then reappeared near China.
• Artistic License – Medicine: In her video translating hate comments, she remarks on how AIDS and cancer were translated to diabetes and insomnia, sarcastically saying they were all the same.
• Ascended Extra: Mulan has a much bigger role in Reflection than she had in I'll Make a Man Out of You. This is of course justified, as the former was the only one actually performed by her in the original film.
• Audience Participation: The community translates, in which the viewers are asked to send in their own translations for a specific song and Malinda cherry-picks her favourite lines to use for the video.
• Ax-Crazy: Malinda's (rather accurate) portrayal of the hyenas from The Lion King (1994).
• Badass Boast: My understanding is infinite.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" claims that doing... something with animals is a sin. Just to drive the point home, there's a quick zoom on a sign apparently meant to discourage zoophilic acts.
• Big "NO!": In one of the "Beauty and the Beast" songs, the last of the five "Bonjour"'s is translated as "NO!", said in a grumpy way by the singer.
• Blatant Lies: In Bohemian Rhapsody, she says that she is not a bad person, then later admits to killing people.
• Beat: Some songs end up with pauses in weird places, often due to the lyrics being translated so that they're shorter than they originally were. For instance, from "I Dreamed A Dream":
  Fantine: If you dream, I'll correct it!
  We will live.
  (pause as the music keeps going and Fantine awkwardly stares in silence)
• Bratty Food Demand: In "Beauty and the Beast", Brian shouts, "Demand for food!" and drums his fists on the table, but accidentally hits Lumiere's flames and shouts, "I am burning!".
  • In "Google Translate Makes Breakfast", Translated Malinda shouts "We have to eat now!".
• Bread Milk Eggs Squick: In Royals we get this line.
  "Aircraft, Iceland, tiger gimpy strap."
  • A Whole New World also has one.
  "Flying Dragon, rolling arbitrary, via Hentai diamond skies."
• Call-Back: Many videos feature call-backs, such as:
  • Bohemian Rhapsody has the line "Oh boy". The last song before this one, All I want for Christmas is You, had the line "Oh boys".
  • One Direction Medley has a mention of "Pasta and frozen". Several earlier episodes of the series had been covers of songs from the Disney movie Frozen.
  • "How Far I'll Go" references the earlier translations of "Let It Go" and "Colors of the Wind" - the former by sticking "give up" onto the end of one line, the latter by using "air can" to refer to wind.
  • In the Love Letter Medley, the translated version of "Surrender" includes "give up" in the last sentence. Malinda even plays a bit of Let It Go's instrumental.
  • Gradually Watermeloned, a fictional perfume product that appears in "BADLY TRANSLATED Beauty Commercials" is an obvious reference to "Gradually watermelon" from Shape of You. The commercial also references Such as Spices, from the line "Now my linens, such as spices!"
  • Africa references the Shape of You video when one of the lines is translated as "Compressed diabetic watermelon" and the backup Malindas sing "Gradually watermelon".
  • Blank Space featured the line "I do not want a child who loves trees". All Star featured the line "My daughter has no knowledge of branches".
  • "I'll Make A Man Out Of You" has the line "Appendix dominating death!" while "We Don't Talk About Bruno" has "My appendix hurts like no other!" - both are delivered in a Large Ham manner by Caleb Hyles.
• Calling Your Attacks: "Countenance jab!"
• The Cameo: Barack Obama gets a cameo in "I'll Make A Man Out Of You" through the magic of Stock Footage.
• Caps Lock: "ATLANTA WILL BE INTERESTING FOR THE STUTTGART" in Havana apparently came out translated in all-caps.
• Catchphrase: Due to some of the repeated lines being translated as one (often nonsensical) thing and songs being sung by one character, these characters sometimes appear to have catchphrases.
  • Ursula's appears to be "The spirit of abysmal despair".
  • Simba's initially appears to be "I do not know a king", although he doesn't say it in "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?".
  • Elsa's appears to be "Do not let them, do not let them see."
  • One of the Snow Whites' appears to be "Bond theme!"
  • Ariel's appears to be "Some parts of the world"
  • Lumiere's appears to be "Be our guestroom".
  • Maui's appears to be "Never mind".
  • Mother Gothel's appears to be "Money is good".
  • Genie seems to have two: "You do not have friends" and "You do not have a friend".
• Catholic School Girls Rule: Obviously more conservative, but she's dressed in a similar way during the "Hit Me Baby One More Time" segment of the 90's Medley. Also said school girls (and boys) want to ambush you, complete with gardening tools as weapons.
• Censored for Comedy: Malinda took this route to represent the line "My right hand came for me" in "Just Beyond the River Bend".
• Changing Chorus: In the version of "Let it Go" from Frozen, just like the original, there's only one consistent line in the chorus. This time, it's "Give up! Give up!". The chorus of "For the First Time in Forever" also has only one consistent line— "For the first term of office indefinite", and even that becomes "For a firstly the eternal" at the end.
• Chastity Couple: Apparently, the man in "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" has a wife who's now a virgin.
• Chewing the Scenery: Malinda often exaggeratedly overacts and over emotes some of the more ridiculous lines Google Translate supplies.
• Christmas Episode: A cover of Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You , a medley Christmas (A Capella.), a cover of The Christmas Song, and a cover of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Apparently, gravity works like this. You just have to ignore it and it will disappear.
• Clip Show: Sort of. Malinda has a video on her vlog channel where she rewatches every episode of the series along with everybody else who appeared in them. The clips are not actually shown on screen, but you can hear the music.
  • This video later got a sequel, which was more of the same. This time, clips from previous episodes were actually shown.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Just about every character acts completely bizarre.
• The Comically Serious: Malinda can sing the most ridiculously butchered lyrics imaginable and somehow keep a straight face throughout the entire song.
• Confusing Multiple Negatives: Blank Space features the line "Not to say was not told I did not say".
• Consummate Liar: "Mariah Carey" admits that she is lying in All I Want For Christmas Is You. This goes a long way to explain the lyrics.
• The Cover Changes the Gender: Malinda mostly averts this by picking songs that either never mention any genders and/or were originally performed by women. However, this is Played Straight by accident in I Just Can't Wait to Be King, which is now about a lioness who wants to become queen.
• Crapsaccharine World: Arendelle apparently has a "discrimination law" in place that has barred Elsa from taking the throne. Anna comes to power instead, and she's planning on killing her new subjects.
• Crosscast Role: Throughout the series, Malinda has played...
  • Big Sean in Problem.
  • All of One Direction in One Direction Medley.
  • Donald Trump in Donald Trump's quotes and tweets according to Google Translate.
  • Adele's boyfriend in Hello.
  • Hamlet from the William Shakespeare play of the same name.
  • Banzai and Ed in Be Prepared.
  • Ash Ketchum from Pokémon.
  • All of The Beatles in her Beatles medley.
  • King George III in You'll Be Back.
  • One of the Backstreet Boys in the "I Want It That Way" finale of the The '90s Medley.
  • Maui in "You're Welcome".
  • Aladdin in "Friend Like Me".
• Damned by Faint Praise: "He made me feel something" from the Despacito video.
• Dancing Is Serious Business: According to Ariel, "Bridge jumping dancing is required."
• Dead All Along: Taylor Swift claims to have been dead all the time in "Look What You Made Me Do".
• Death by Adaptation: While Anastasia survived in the original film (if not in real life), the translation of "Journey to the Past" has her say, "Sorry, this time I die".
• Death Is Cheap: Singers regularly get killed only to come back to life a few lines later. Some also mention having died previously.
  Ariana Grande: I'm dying a lot.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Several examples, caused by shoddy translation.
  • "Indefinite with us indefinitely."
  • "Bobby is not a believer, nor does he have faith"
  • "And today I need it today!"
  • "Try to enjoy your enjoyment!"
  • "Love is a feeling of love"
  • "I am beautiful and beautiful"
  • "I have more power than I have"
  • "Please prefer our favorite favorite"
  • "You can chicken the chicken in the heat in the heat."
• Didn't Think This Through: "Be Prepared" has Scar declare that the Hyenas will not go hungry... but he will. The delivery of that line makes it seem like he realized what he just said.
• Dissimile: Anna wants to build a snow male which is not a snow male. To be fair, this is pretty close to the original line.
• The Diss Track: Sometimes, the Translation Train Wreck results in lines coming off as unintentionally mean and turning the song into a diss track:
  • Subverted for "You've Got a Friend in Me", where the woman singing the translated lyrics is initially very rude to the one singing the actual lyrics, claiming that they're not friends and no one loves her, but then they make up and become friends.
  • In "Friend Like Me", Genie is insulting Aladdin for not having any friends (possibly because Genie's girlfriend likes Aladdin).
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: Appears in Love Is An Open Door, for some reason.
  Anna and Hans: "Doom! DOOM!"^note Actual line: "Jinx! Jinx again!"
• Driven to Suicide: Near the end of a consistently dark T’was The Night Before Christmas, Santa puts his head in the oven.
• Dub Name Change:
  • In the Steven Universe songs; Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, and Steven are named Opal^note who is an actual character in the show, but is a Fusion that doesn't involve Garnet/Garnement, Cobblestone, BOURGOGNE, and Blumberg. The Crystal Gems are called Crystal Jewelry.
  • In "Alexander Hamilton", Hamilton's last name is changed to Lukashenko.
  • The "Google Translate DESTROYS Movie Quotes" video changes Inigo Montoya to "Gigi Montova".
  • In "BADLY TRANSLATED Beauty Commercials", the Dollar Shave Club is renamed to the Puppy Barley Club.
• Earth Song: In the cover of "Just Around the River Bend" from Pocahontas, Pochahontas is an environmentalist and keeps singing about protecting the environment.
• Eating Optional: "They were live without food."
• The End Is Nigh: Hans and Anna's Doomy Dooms of Doom moment in "Love Is an Open Door" suggests this. It's reinforced by Anna declaring in "For the First Time In Forever" that "everyone is ending tomorrow."
• Epic Fail:
  • In "Despacito", the title (Spanish for "slowly") ends up being translated to "quickly", its antonym.
  • Similarly, in "Google Translate Asks Your Questions, Part 2", the question "What are some of your pet peeves?" becomes "what do you like?"
• Establishing Character Moment: The very first verse in the "Let It Go" cover - the very first video in the series - perfectly establishes both Google Translate's less than stellar translation skills and Malinda's serious approach to the new lyrics.
  Malinda as Elsa: "Lit white snow on the mountain tonight, no visible legs. Discrimination law, is probably the queen."'
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French: "Never mind that our name^note  Trucs de Cheveux means "hair stuff" in French. It still sounds cool."
• Fainting:
  • One of the Malindas in "Total Eclipse of the Heart" faints due to a heart attack but then recovers.
  • Caleb Hyles has a similarly brief heart-attack in "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" and also faints from exhaustion in "Steven Universe."
• Facepalm: During "Step in Time", Mary facepalms due to Bert spouting nonsense while having inexplicable trouble walking. At the end of "Try Everything", Judy does this after finally having enough of Gazelle's descent into insanity.
• Fantastic Racism: Elsa is discriminated against by her subjects, likely because of her powers. They've passed some kind of law against her so that Anna will come to power instead.
• Faux Horrific: "Oh my God! No! You do not need to go to the United States!"
• Flat "What": Malinda will give herself something to that effect if a line sounds weird as she sings.
• Flipping the Bird: Malinda does this (censored, of course) in "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" when she sings the lyric "use the middle finger."
• Foreshadowing: Anna asking Elsa to start a "snowman corporation" with her sounds absurd at first, but with the eventual reveal of a "discrimination law" that apparently bars Elsa from the throne, it starts to make some amount of sense. Given how depressed she looks, Anna may have just found out about the law, and may have been trying to spare Elsa from the Awful Truth by getting her to escape into the business world with her.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Several videos have broken away from the Translator Fails formula in various ways.
  • "Blank Space" doesn't have a music video. Instead, it consists entirely of Google images.
  • "Translator Fails MEETS SIRI!!" is not an actual song. Instead, it has Malinda reading out quotes from previous translations to Siri.
  • Then there is Donald Trump's quotes and tweets according to Google Translate, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • She also made Translator Fails:Hamlet, where she reads Hamlet's Soliloquy, as translated by Google.
  • "HARRY POTTER meets GOOGLE TRANSLATE" is one of the biggest diversions from the usual format: It's done as sort of a quiz show, where Malinda challenges guests Brizzy Voices and Tessa Netting to guess the correct versions of google translated quotes and names from the Harry Potter books and films.
  • "GOOGLE TRANSLATE LIKES FEET?? A Q&A" involves Malinda translate questions she was asked on a Q&A on her Instagram. So far, there are three videos that follow this format, and Malinda usually tries to genuinely answer them.
  • One video takes one of Andrew Huang's songs and puts them through several layers of autocaptions instead of Google Translate.
  • The 21 Pilots medley features guest star Elise Ecklund's live ukulele playing, rather than using a prerecorded backing track that emulates the original music.
  • "Google Translate Explains Game of Thrones" is a summary of Game of Thrones translated.
• Funny Background Event: The "Step in Time" segment of the Mary Poppins has Brian-as-Bert having some serious trouble walking. In the background, Malinda-as-Mary is walking alongside him completely normally while staring at him in bewilderment, before finally Facepalming.
  • As Malinda sings the last chorus of "Love The Way You Lie" in the Eminem medley, Tom is in the background fooling around with a wiffle ball bat and, later, two bottles of mustard, both of which were props from earlier parts of the video. A particular funny part has him spinning the bat and briefly breaking character as it goes flying out of his hands, only to quickly catch himself and go back to his previous scowling expression.
• Girls with Moustaches: Sometimes, Malinda puts on a fake mustache to better resemble the person she's imitating.
• Gloomy Gray: A common visual gag in the videos is for the colors to turn gray as soon as the song gets unusually depressing for a moment, like spontaneously referencing death or anxiety.
• A God Am I: One of the lines in "All Star" is "I am Lord".
• God Is Evil: According to Esmeralda in "God Help the Outcasts", "God will help the wicked", possibly by causing the "death of humanity" mentioned one line later.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: In "For the First Time in Forever", Anna suggests that she's going to kill all her subjects on her first day in power.
• Good Is Dumb: The Crystal Gems, judging from lyrics like "If you are wrong, you are cool" and "If we cannot think, we are able have always find ways".
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: Happens sometimes, when not all words are translated back into English.
• Groin Attack: One of the ingredients in the translation of a birthday cake asks for 10,000 foreskins. Ow.
• Healing Factor: The Malindas in "Total Eclipse of the Heart" are said to live forever. They've been crushed, destroyed, had heart attacks and other stuff besides, but keep popping back.
• Hollywood Atheist: Apparently, in "Look What You Made Me Do", there is a man named Bobby who "doesn't have faith, is not a believer and can't think much."
• Hollywood Heart Attack:
  • Caleb Hyles as Zazu dies mid-sentence of a heart attack in I Just Can't Wait to Be King. He's totally fine come his next line.
  • Something similar happens to one of the Malindas in "Total Eclipse of the Heart", only she faints rather than dies and pops up back to normal.
    Malinda 1: (gasps, grabs her chest) "Heart attack! Oh no!" (collapses)
    Malinda 2: "Uh...is anyone gonna call 911?"
    Malinda 1: (gets up and starts singing)
    Malinda 2: "Never mind."
• Hotter and Sexier:
  • Played With for the music video for the translation of the Miley Cyrus song Wrecking Ball is more sexual than Malinda's previous videos. However, compared to the original video, it's downright chaste.
  • Lampshaded in Problem.
  "Ariana Grande:" "I should be more foxy and I realise that."
  • In Stitches, the singer mentions that they think that they are a cock and turns nude at end of the video.
• Hypocritical Humor: Elphaba in the "Popular" video becomes the Meta Girl and outright states how strange the lines Glinda sang. This is despite how she ended up singing similar lines in previous Wicked videos.
  • One of the lines in ""La vie En Rose" is translated into "let me make sense" - as usual, the rest of the translated lyrics don't make much sense.
• I Am the Noun: Played With in Take Me or Leave Me.
  Maureen and Joanne: I am Exodus! We are not!
  • Also played straight in the Shape of You video. "I am the Confederate Army."
• Idle Rich: Simba is this. It doesn't help that she apparently doesn't actually have to pay for anything.
  Simba: "You see I've always been the center of attention."
• Immediate Self-Contradiction:
  • In "For the First Time in Forever":
    Anna: "It will be great, would not it be boring?"
  • In "Look What You Made Me Do", Taylor Swift says she's guilty, then says she's not guilty the very next line.
  • The title character of "Alexander Hamilton" gives his name as "Alexander Lukashenko" only to say that it isn't his name a line later.
  • "Into the Unknown" begins with Elsa saying, "I can hear you, but I can't hear you".
• Immortality: "Total Eclipse of the Heart" has the lyric "we live forever".
• Implausible Deniability: The newly elected Queen Elsa claims that she "has no power" right before using her powers to build a huge ice castle all by herself in a matter of minutes.
• Implied Death Threat:
  • In "For the First Time in Forever", Anna says, "I know that everyone is ending tomorrow; why, they are the 1st".
  • "Beauty and the Beast" has the line "I could not be seen, but it kills", accompanied by Belle raising a knife.
  • One of the gems in "Steven Universe" says, "I shoot him", and then appears to deny it later in the song saying "I did not hurt my friend".
  • "Despacito" has the lines "I want to get rid of your throat" and "I killed without problems".
  • A bit more obvious in "No Tears Left to Cry" with the line "I'll kill him".
  • "New Rules" has the line "I will have to attack again".
• Improbable Weapon User: The ship's crew in "The Wellerman" have started fighting each other with spoons.
• Incompatible Orientation: From the "Popular" video
  "Glinda:" "You're cute.""
  "Elphaba:" "I don't swing your way."
• Inappropriate Pride: Played for Laughs in the Google Translate Sings episode of "Friend Like Me", in which the Genie (Brian) claims they "pride (themselves) on slavery", to which Aladdin (Malinda) argues they shouldn't be proud about.
• Inconsistent Dub: Éponine Thénardier's beloved is referred to as Chuck, Lee and Donnie. What's worse is that the character was not even named in the original song.
• Irony: The townsfolk from Beauty and the Beast, who were originally pretty judgemental toward anyone they saw as odd or eccentric (such as Belle), are now jovial eccentrics themselves who don't have a bad word to say about Belle at all.
• It Is Dehumanising: Malinda eventually decides to refer to Siri as an "it" rather than a "she" specifically in order to not humanise it.
• Large Ham: Malinda, Caleb Hyles, and Jonathan Young are clearly having the time of their lives singing all of these butchered songs.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Sometimes the lyrics almost seem to be lampshading how nonsensical they are.
  Glinda: "I can not understand you."
  • "I should make more sense and I understand that."
  • "Am I different?"
  • For the First time in Forever has Anna wondering if she is drunk or high.
  • The Beatles medley ended up stating "Have a disastrous lyrics"
  • ''Popular" has this:
  Glinda: "I understand."
  Elphaba: "One of us does."
  • "You're Welcome" has this:
  Maui: They may be translated *winks at the screen and the words "AYEEEEE" pop up*
  • "Africa" has this, which Malinda lampshades:
  I think some of the words have been written and the subtitles have been written
• Lethal Chef:
  • "GOOGLE TRANSLATE MAKES MY BIRTHDAY CAKE" turns a cake recipe into a bizarre salad that includes glue and blood.
  • The translated recipe from "Google Translate Makes Dinner *FAIL*" definitely counts as "lethal", since its nonsensical ingredients include nightshade juice.
• List Song: Royals. The lists are... pretty random.
  "But yellow teeth, grey goose, WC, one for all the layers in the same spotted evening dress, interest trash rates."
• Literal Music Video: The music video for ''Wrecking Ball'' is based more closely on the new lyrics than on the original song's music video.
  • Blank Space is very much this. The video consists of images found on Google by searching for the translated song lyrics, so this is a given.
• Lonely at the Top: In "For the First Time in Forever", Anna fears that her rule will be great, but also boring.
• Lost in Translation: Many translated lines result from an ambiguity or translation error from a specific language.
  • In "Hamlet", the line "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come" becomes "Asleep of death, might come what Yume". In Japanese, the word for dream is 夢 (yume).
  • In "Hello", the line "I'm sorry" becomes "Apple". In Korean, the word 사과 (sagwa) can mean "apology" or "apple".
  • In "When Will My Life Begin", the line "Paper mache, a bit of ballet and chess" becomes "Purple paper, brooch, and failure". In French, the word échecs means "chess", but its homophone échec means "failure".
  • In "Google Translate does my Night Time Routine", the line "The shave butter helps fight razor burns and ingrown hairs" becomes "Avocado helps fight tongue and hair". In Vietnamese, the word bơ can mean "butter" or "avocado".
  • In "I'll Make A Man Out Of You", "You're the saddest bunch I've ever met" becomes "you are a depressed banana I met" because of ambiguities in the English language - "sad" can either mean "pathetic" or "depressed", and a "bunch" can be a group of either people or bananas, so you can sort of see where Google translate turned "the saddest bunch" into "a depressed banana".
  • In "Google Translate Makes A Mask", "gloves" becomes "hand shoes" - The word for "gloves" in German is "Handschuhe", which does literally mean "handshoes".
  • The name Bruno means "brown" in Spanish, so in "We Don't Talk About Bruno", references to "chocolate" and "burgundy" ^note technically a dark shade of red, but looks brown-ish, are probably attempts to translate the proper name as a color.
  • There are many songs where "baby" is translated to "child", "children" or "infant". The distinction between the literal (a young human) and figurative (a term of affection, which is what the word "baby" was originally used to mean in these songs) senses of the word understandably erodes after the layers of translation - other languages don't use the word "baby" in the same way that English does.
  • In "Bohemian Rhapsody", "sent shivers down my spine" becomes "chicken skin". Presumably, "shivers down my spine" became "goosebumps" at one point, which translates to "nổi da gà" (literally, "to have chicken skin") in Vietnamese.
  • In "Mercy" from the Shawn Mendes medley, "Would you please have mercy, mercy on my heart?" becomes "Oh please, thank you, good morning Libby". The Hebrew for "my heart" is "libi" which could then become "Libby".
• Ludicrous Gift Request: In "All I Want for Christmas is You", the title lyric turns into "All I want for Christmas is your baby".
• Lyrical Dissonance: Elsa sounds happy when she's telling the audience to give up.
• The Mad Hatter: Aaron Burr casually and cheerfully admits to being "very crazy" in "Alexander Hamilton."
• Mad Love: "Love Is an Open Door" translation: Hans claims to love Anna crazy.
• Male Gaze: "You'll Be Back" has a refrain of "that behind!" which is accompanied by King George III winking.
• Medium Awareness: In "Alexander Hamilton", the other singers seem aware they're in a musical since they ask Alex if he knows what the script says.
• Meta Guy: For the translation of "I Just Can't Wait To Be King", Caleb Hyles does the Zazu lines. There are several times where he breaks character to comment on how strange the lyrics are.
  • Happens again with "Elphaba" in the Popular video.
  • Malinda herself becomes one in the Hello translation, where she wonders why anyone still uses a flip phone and claims that everything she says makes perfect sense.
  • Rapunzel acts as this in "Mother Knows Best".
• Ms. Fanservice: Averted. While Malinda is quite attractive, the videos never focus on that or try to take advantage of it unless it's for comedic purposes.
• Mistakes Are Not the End of the World: Exaggerated with the line "If you are wrong, you are cool".
• Mister Seahorse: Hercules was expecting a baby in Go the Distance. Subverted, since he apparently is also actually a girl named Hillary.
• Mood Whiplash: Malinda's music video for Bad Blood has this, as it has the look of a gritty action movie with elements of Sugar Bowl. Occasionally, Malinda will post non-Google Translated songs - these can, ironically, sound very weird and unusual after listening to her sing nonsense for a while.
  • Halfway through the intense Hellfire video, Frollo blissfully declares that "He also accepted me as I am, a person!"
  • ''Thriller' video is full of this - The lyric "This is wonderful, it's funny" is followed by "The fact that we are dying".
  • In "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", the line "We are in the age of suffering" is immediately followed by "Happy Birthday".
  • “If Google Translate dictates my morning routine” gives us this gem: “Life is not my favorite, but it helps me to SUFFER and SUFFER in my healthy health!”
• Motor Mouth: Common when a line becomes much longer over the course of the translations and Malinda has to keep to the time of the music.
• Mundane Made Awesome: "Miley Cyrus" looking at a tennis ball in wonder, implying that it is the relic mentioned in the song.
  • The translation of Poor Unfortunate Souls, which has dramatic music playing when the line "Help? Yep." is sung.
  • One of the translated "Game of Thrones" characters returns as a firefighter. The way she phrases it makes it a grand acheivement.
• Narcissist: "Mariah Carey," who just loves herself.
  • Megara from Hercules has an entire song about this, though you could also interpret it as being about self-acceptance.
  • Anna mentions that she loves herself in From the First Time in Forever, apropos nothing.
  • "Garnement"^note Garnet in "Stronger Than You" repeatedly sings "I love who I am"
  • Subverted with Scar and Donald Trump.
• Never Learned to Read: According to Google Translate, "Lady GaGa" can't read.
• Never Trust a Title: Google Translate doesn't actually sing (and is, in fact, never actually heard.) Its role is more akin to that of a songwriter.
• New Job as the Plot Demands: "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" suggests that Anna works in the business world, as she wants to start a "snowman corporation." Then "For the First Time in Forever" has her preparing to take over as the new queen. Then "Love Is an Open Door" suggests that she's a doctor, as she and Hans are interested in "cardiac re-synchronization."
• Nightmare Fetishist: Young Anna wants Elsa to build a Yeti with her.
• Not a Morning Person: In her translated morning routine, Malinda prefers to sleep more, and states that she's not awake, but happy to help.
• Overly Long Gag: In "All Star", Malinda ends the video with making a gag of her "washing a picture of a mushroom", while the instrumental break in the original song plays in the background.
• Parental Favoritism: In "Let It Go", Elsa suggests that a "discrimination law" is the reason Anna was apparently given the throne instead of her. Apparently, their parents either passed such a law or allowed one to be put in place.
• Parody Assistance: Sort of. Malinda and Jonathan Young collaborated on both a serious cover and a "Google Translate Sings" version of Hellfire, shot back to back and released the same day.
• The Parody Before Christmas: In "Google Translate Ruins 'Twas the Night Before Christmas", Malinda recites the poem, alongside a version of the poem that's been butchered by Google Translate. The translated version is something of a Dark Parody, containing lines like "His team was bleeding" and "He stuck his head in the oven".
• Person as Verb: In "The Middle", as described by Malinda, "apparently everybody wants to Phillip".
• Playing a Tree: In "Look What You Made Me Do", an unnamed man or boy is said to have "played the role of yam".
• President for Life: "For the First Time in Forever" has Anna singing about her plans for her "term of office indefinite."
• Pretty Fly For A White Girl: Malinda's rap in Problem. Given that it was originally sung by Iggy Azalea, this isn't surprising.
  "Iggy Azalea:" "It is reserved for the IgG!"
• Pronoun Trouble: Bad Blood has "Taylor Swift" referring to somebody as his/her/their daddy.
• Quarreling Song: Kind of. Her Cinderella parody has the singers (played by Malinda Acting for Two) trying to upstage each other and barely hiding their rivalry behind Stepford Smiler masks, turning a duet into a duel.
  • She does the same thing in her "Once Upon a Dream" translation. Except now, one of the princesses is singing the original lyrics while the other is singing the translated ones.
• Rainbow Lite: Exaggerated in Somewhere Over the Rainbow, where the rainbow is apparently only blue.
• Reaction Shot:
  • "Poor Unfortunate Souls" is interspersed with shots of Ariel looking confused by the new lyrics.
  • "Try Everything" shows Judy and Nick looking increasingly baffled as the song goes on, culminating in Judy Facepalming.
• Recursive Translation: The method used to create the new lyrics.
• Right Way/Wrong Way Pair: In 2018, Malinda created a new sub-series that reads a normal sentence followed by its Google translated form. So far, she has done this to read pick-up lines, hate comments, American congressional documents, beauty product commercials, a workout video, a morning routine, a weather report, horoscopes, an airplane safety guide, a Game of Thrones recap, a meditation session, Twitter bios, the letter that came with Malinda's Gold Play Button for reaching a million subscribers, a reading of "T'was the Night Before Christmas", and a handwashing tutorial.
  • Those in successive steps eventually lead to the two versions diverging greatly in results, as shown with a makeup tutorial, assembly instructions, a cake recipe, a dinner recipe, and a nighttime routine.
• Royal "We": Elsa slips into this in "Let It Go."
• Sanity Slippage Song: "Try Everything" turns into one for Gazelle.
• Scam Religion: "Hozier" wants to create a new religion with herself as the figurehead.
  "Hozier:" "I as a dog will be your false idol worship."
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness:
  • The Title Drops in Poor Unfortunate Souls are consistently translated as "The spirit of abysmal despair."
  • In "One Day More", Javert's line "We will nip it in the bud" becomes "We will stifle it in the embryonic stage".
  • "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" is now "Shimmer flicker minimum star".
• Setting Update:
  • The Sound of Music now seems to take place at some point after the year 2000.
  • Pokémon is apparently now set in Australia.
  • "The Nightmare Before Christmas" now takes place in San Jose, Arizona.
  • "Havana" is now in Hawaii, and Malinda begs to be taken back to the Cubans.
• Shock-and-Switch Ending: In the video covering the badly-translated "Total Eclipse of the Heart", the song ends with the title being mistranslated as "Heart Attack", accompanied by the singer exclaiming, "Heart attack! Oh no!" and passing out. However, she then pops up hunky-dory.
  Is anyone gonna call 911? ... Never mind.
• Shout-Out: Google Translate can actually create these purely by accident.
  • "I'm lovin' it."
  • "Do not want" pops up quite a bit.
  • "Anyway, I am a man."
  • It is very important to have one D."
  • "Hello Kitty!"
  • "Pearl is in my texts."
  • Hellfire might take the cake, as it references Madonna (who is really a man), The Little Mermaid, Hades and The Phantom of the Opera.
  • "I see famous people!"
  • "Desperate ablution On the Gorillaz Tracks".
  • During "Blank Space", a picture of Wally from Where's Wally? can be seen during the "Where are you?" line.
  • "BlazBlue can touch time. And the last one is incredible."
  • "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is interrupted by a different song when one of the lines is translated as "And I will always love you".
  • In a similar vein, The Greatest Showman Medley has "Come alive" translated to "Stay alive" so a bit of disco is thrown in.
• Slut-Shaming: In “This is Halloween”, “I am a prostitute, and I’m sorry.”
• Song Style Shift: The ABBA edition breaks into Irish music for a second or two before going back.
• Spiritual Antithesis: In really bad cases, the translations can be this to the original song.
  • In Wrecking Ball, for instance, the line "I didn't mean to start a war," is translated as "I meant to start a war."
  • "Let It Go" becomes "Give Up."
  • In the Shawn Mendes compilation, "Please have mercy on me" becomes "Please crush me."
  • "Hellfire" turns "It's not my fault!" into "This is my crime!"
  • "Go The Distance" is turned from Hercules eagerly starting his adventure into Hercules refusing to go on an adventure at all.
  • Two lines from "Dancing Queen" in the ABBA medley get this treatment. "Only seventeen" becomes "only seventy", and "you can dance" becomes "you cannot do it".
  • "Despacito", which means "slowly", is translated into "quickly", and the song speeds up to reflect this.
  • The original "Thriller" is spooky in a fun way. The translation goes into Mood Whiplash between creepy ("Now you have to fight for your life tomorrow") and super cheerful ("Have fun, and enjoy being sunny in the day").
  • In the BTS parody, "More, more more" from Blood Sweat and Tears is translated as "Too much, too much, too much".
  • "You've Got a Friend in Me" becomes "you're not a friend".
  • "You ain't never had a friend like me" becomes "you do not have a friend".
  • New Rules, a song about setting rules to cut yourself off from your ex, has "Two, do not let him go" and "I am angry about the new rules". Similarly, "Three, Don't be his friend" becomes "Yes, friends" ^note although a later translation of the same line is "do not make friends - no friends"
  • In "You're Welcome", "I can explain every natural phenomenon" becomes "I can not describe the natural area". Interestingly, the song goes on to describe the natural area.
• Spiritual Successor: Could be seen as one to the English dub of Backstroke of the West, as they are both terrible Recursive Translations performed completely seriously.
• Spock Speak: Sometimes, a line may preserve its original meaning, but end up like this:
  "With all the force of a great typhoon" —> "Have all the capabilities of a large hurricane"
  "Folks would kill to fill your shoes" —> "People are going to maim for the filling of your footwear"
• Stealth Insult: "You are not a small problem."
• Stepford Smiler: The two Malindas in Cinderella, who seem to be just barely resisting tearing each other to pieces.
• Stuffy Old Songs About the Buttocks: "You'll Be Back" is partially turned into one of these. "That behind!" *wink*
• Sweet Polly Oliver: If Frollo is to be believed, Madonna is actually a man.
• Take Our Word for It: "Mariah Carey" claims to be "a duck in the shade of a tree." She looks completely human, there is no tree is sight, and she doesn't seem to be sitting in the shade, either.
• Take That!:
  • "Gossip Girl I think the hole!"
  • "Do not be Marvel."
  • Not the lyrics itself, but in Blank Space the lyric "Adulterer with enthusiasm" is represented by Tiger Woods.
  • The video for "Into the Unknown" was just packed with jabs at Frozen II.
  • Malinda consistently takes shots at Donald Trump. For example, when the translated lyrics to "Never Gonna Give You Up" say "do not speak impulsively", Trump's photo appears onscreen.
• Techno Babble: Appears in ''All I Want For Christmas Is You," of all places.
  "I'm already in operation in accordance with a graphical interface."
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: The final line in "This is Halloween" is "All people hail from butternut, bitches" complete with gangster signs.
• Took a Level in Cynic: Hillary Rodham Clinton seems to have done this after being translated.
  Malinda as Clinton: "Note: The United States cannot be trusted and cannot hope to explain." ^{Actual line}"Don't believe the haters who describe America as hopeless and broken."
• Took a Level in Kindness: Donald Trump seems to have done this by being translated.
  Malinda as Trump: "Arianna Huffington is charming inside and outside." ^{Actual line}"@arianahuff is unattractive both inside and out."
• Translate The Loan Words Too: "Rapunzel" is changed to "Lettuce" in "Mother Knows Best", and this is not too far from what her name means…
• Translated Cover Version: Played With. When making these, the goal is usually to create a new version of a song in a different language that is as faithful to the original version as possible. Here, the new song will be in the same language as it started out in, and it will be as unfaithful to the original as possible.
• Translation Train Wreck: The entire focus of the series.
• Translation: "Yes": Both this trope and its inverse appears frequently. For instance, in "One Day More," the lyrics "One more dawn, one more day." are translated as "There is also a morning, a day."
  • The Title Drop in ''A Whole New World'' is translated as "He adventure that is an entire world tin of innovation!"
  • The ultimate example happens in ''Christmas (A Capella,)) where "Rooty toot toots and rummy tum tums" becomes "Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, the roots of the many of the trumpets sound and the value of the tummies turkey." The music and the chorus are forced to stop so that Malinda has time to catch up.
  • For the First Time in Forever, turns the line "I'll be dancing through the night." into "Prom."
  • Make a Man Out of You, changes "Say goodbye to those who knew me!" into "Goodbye!"
  • My Heart Will Go On seems to be full of these. "Far across the distance" turns into "remote", "once more, you open the door" into "unlock the door", "there's nothing I fear" into "terrible", a literal example where "far" turns into "yes"...
  • In Thriller, the line "And realize that there's nowhere left to run" is translated as "Popcorn".
  • Be Prepared changes "But thick as you are" to "fat". Later on, "We're going to kill him, and Simba too" becomes "cereal."
  • Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas translates the line "From now on our troubles will be miles away" as "My lord, two kilometers to the management to bid you welcome, and the cannon shot a soldier".
  • There is another literal example in Journey to the Past, where "somewhere down this road" is translated as "yes" and "yes yes".
  • There is yet another literal example in All I Want For Christmas Is You where "is" is translated to "yes".
  • There are a few examples from the ABBA medley. For example, "Gonna do my very best and it ain't no lie" becomes "I'm stupid".
  • In All Star, "All that glitters is gold" is translated as "Poland".
  • The Plagues turns "serving as your foe on his behalf" into "subscriber" and "then let my heart be hardened" into "girlfriend".
  • The Sound of Silence turns "Hello darkness, my old friend" into "Hey, dark, hi" and "I've come to talk with you again" into "Let's talk".
  • In Google Translate does my Night Time Routine, "I'll then turn out the light in my herb garden, the lights in the apartment, and then I tuck into bed." becomes "Includes Includes."
  • In Google Translate Explains How to Wash Your Hands, "Rinse the soap off with running water. Turn off the faucet with a towel." becomes "Soap".
  • In Never Gonna Give You Up, "Never gonna say goodbye" is translated into "Boomerang".
• Transparent Closet: The muses' lines in "I Won't Say I'm in Love" suggest that Megara is into other women and not very good at hiding it.
• Trrrilling Rrrs: Used heavily by Maria Rainer and King George.
• Unexplained Recovery:
  • Zazu suffers a Hollywood Heart Attack in "I Just Can't Wait to be King", but is perfectly fine two lines later.
  • The main Malinda also has a heart attack in "Total Eclipse of the Heart", which makes one of the backup Malindas ask if anyone's going to call 911 before the main one gets right back up and continues singing as though it didn't happen.
  • In "You're Welcome", Maui collapses and starts dying from sun exposure, but immediately dismisses it with a cheery "Never mind!" and carries on like nothing happened.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Frollo apparently improved the oil supply in the Middle East and Africa, but had to use Satanic power to do so.
• With Catlike Tread: "We are hiding!", sings Claude Frollo at the top of his lungs in "Hellfire".
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
  • At one point of "Poor Unfortunate Souls", Ursula sings that "Lake had fear of charcoal".
  • Rapunzel is scared of colour (and also debt, but who wouldn't be?) in "When Will My Life Begin".
  • Mother Gothel appears to be afraid of IKEA and thumbs in "Mother Knows Best."
• Word Salad Lyrics: Many songs are turned into this by Google Translate.
  • Possibly the most incomprehensible example of which appears in “Africa”:
  "Anime cristemopois diaosomia dibesi compressed diabetic watermelon."
• The Wrongful Heir to the Throne: Elsa's subjects seem to think this of her, since they've passed a "discrimination law" that favors Anna over her.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe:
  • "One Direction Medley" slips into archaic English near the end. It's just as messed up as the rest of the lyrics.
  "But I cannot believe that after I thee, you not know, alas, alas, thou knowest not that thou are fair"
  • Amusingly enough, putting Hamlet through Google Translate has the opposite effect.
  "Dream. Dream. Yeah, that's the problem."
• Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb: "Young people 'cause we're stupid."