Mistranslations and Misinterpretations

How well do you know the lyrics to the song Part of Your World from Disney's The Little Mermaid? I grew up listening to Disney sing-alongs and watching Disney movies, so I'd say I know the lyrics pretty well, but even if you don't know the lyrics at all, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to tell that this isn't how it's supposed to go. And I just noticed that the original lyrics are in the description, along with the four languages they were translated into before bringing them back to English. Enjoy!




By the way, if you want to watch the rest of this lady's videos (and after watching this, how could you not?), her youtube name is Malinda Kathleen Reese. There should be a Youtube link on the video itself, but in case that doesn't work, you can just go to youtube and do a search for her name with "Part of Your World" or "Google Translate Sings." If you like Frozen, I recommend checking out her two (so far?) Frozen parodies. I laughed until I cried, just as I did with this one.

But mistranslations, especially with something more serious than Disney songs (like, say, religious texts), is no laughing matter. Let's imagine, for a moment, that this mistranslations parody was how a significant portion of the world thought the song was supposed to go, and they went into great detail to interpret what these lyrics might mean.

They might speculate on Ariel's involvement with the Department of the Treasury, with it being, perhaps, the source of her "enormous treasure." The interpreters would certainly try to identify "the disease of the sponge." They may even diagnose several people (especially "bright young woman") with such a disease, even if it didn't exist (Don't believe me? Ask the witches). I'd hate to think of what treatments they might come up with!

And as for Ariel herself, who or what is she? In her own words, she's "whoseits whatsits positive and negative," as well as "devices," and "20 this," with "this" possibly referring to "thingamabobs." She also mentioned that she wanted to be "some parts of the world." The past tense used here could mean that she no longer wants to be some parts of the world, or that it's no longer possible for her to be them. I'm not sure which.

Now imagine what might happen if someone tried to form a religion using such mistranslations. It would certainly involve the worship of idols, 20 or more of them, both of the positive and negative variety. And beyond what I've already mentioned concerning the Department of the Treasury and the Disease of the Sponge, there would certainly be some dancing involved. In fact "dancing is required," which is ironic because idols don't move, and she seemed to express some surprise when she learned that we move.

Perhaps, in this religion, Ariel is not a spiritual manifestation of the Twenty Plus idols, but rather a prophetess who attempts to interpret the will of the idols ("I think they want to see dancing to look at") and through whom the idols occasionally speak ("Power, it's easy, and I'm devices").

The more I think about this new, strange religion, the less strange it seems. It's almost as if the idea is growing on me, which is insane, since the "religion" is literally based on a deliberately mistranslated Disney song! I can only imagine how bad it would be if people took an actual religious text, or several differing mistranslations of one, and built hundreds of religions based on the various interpretations of the mistranslations of the text. I could see it quickly becoming extremely confusing, with millions of people eventually giving up on ever learning what God really teaches or even what He (or She or It) even is. All I can say is thank goodness for modern revelation and a religious text that only had to be translated once or twice! Without them, we would be so unspeakably confused.