Waning Lyrical

I haven’t found time to write about my fantastic weekend yet, but gracet helpfully gave me a meme to fill the silence with:

“Find a song that everybody knows and put the lyrics into the Babelfish (http://babelfish.altavista.com/). Translate them from English to German, then German to French, and then French to English. Then post here with 3 clues. See who gets the song right first.”

I deliberately chose a song which had incoherent lyrics to begin with, but I still think this is pretty easy.

Translated lyrics:

Freight on rifles
to take in top your friends,
him it recreation is to lose
and it is a panel itself to pretend
more ensured me
white which I know
has word salts

Hallo (X 16)

the lights him we are here are maintained
maintaining to us less dangerously than I believe
than stupidly and contagious
here we are now maintained has us
Mulatto
Moskito of the Albino
has my Yea
libido

me are more badly above than I make well
and for this gift
that I believe our small whom group
is always been and always the will at the end blessed

Hallo (X 16)

with the lights of him we are here maintained
it believes that stupidly and contagious
here we are now maintained has us
Mulatto
Moskito of the Albino
has my Yea
libido

and that I precisely forget
what that it takes to us,
and but I estimate that it forms me smile
that I find to be hard hard for him, good OH-
found that also always, nevermind

Hallo (X 16)

the lights him we are here are maintained
now less dangerously than I believe
than stupidly and contagious
here we are now maintained has us
Mulatto
Moskito of the Albino
has my Yea
libido

Clues:

  1. A close friend of Neil Gaiman has regularly covered this song in her gigs.
  2. A parody of the album cover featured a donut in place of the greenback used in the original.
  3. The lead singer’s child is apparently middle-named after a legume.

10 Comments

  1. Oooh! I know the answer. It’s one of my favourite songs. I’m not sure if I want to spoil it for everyone though.

    But just to prove that I know it – the writer/lead singer was ‘inspired’ by the name of a deodorant.

    Am I the first? :)

  2. Too easy – try translating it through Japanese. I think it’s the most gramatically different language from English on Babelfish’s list. My site, in fact, has a button on it that translates the site through Japanese and back.

    Good fun idea though.

  3. In my case, ‘mulatto’, ‘mosquito’ and ‘libido’ were what gave it away. For some reason, I always thought the chorus was ‘how low’ x 16 so that wasn’t a giveaway at all in my case. Heh.

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