Something interesting happens when you try to re-translate phrases in Google Translate –if by “interesting,” you mean “hilariously inaccurate.” When you plug in a sentence or paragraph in one language, translate to another, and then translate it back to the language you started with, you see just how much can get lost in translation.

Singer Malinda Kathleen Reese started a YouTube series based on this idea called Google Translate Sings. As she explains in one of her videos, the idea came from high school friends who thought it would be funny to re-translate works of literature and perform dramatic readings of the mangled texts. Reese took things a step further by using famous song lyrics, and the results are just wrong–so amazingly wrong.





Just for fun, we’ve re-translated this article from English to Basque and back to English–enjoy!