We reverse translated every fight song in the MAC, and it was glorious.

The offseason is (mercifully) drawing to a close, which is nice becuase it’s pretty hard to make articles in those dry, sportsless months.

Thankfully, Spencer Hall of EDSBS and SB Nation fame returned triumphantly in recent weeks to #create #content and one of his most recent articles explored the literary boundaries of one of our favorite musical institutions: the collegiate fight song.

While it was quite enjoyable, there was a noticeable absence of our favorite MAC squads in it, so we’re here to remedy that.

We took all 12 MAC fight songs and translated them through Google Translate into various languages and then reverse engineered it back to English. Following now are the results of all that work:

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Akron Zips (English to Traditional Chinese and back)

THe Akron fight song goes fron a happy little diddy about cheering for the ever-loved Akron sports team to a past tense missive about what could have been.

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Ball State Cardinals (English to Urdu and back)

One of the catchiest fight songs in the MAC turns into a rathy wordy ballad which inexplicably turns the word fight into boy.

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Bowling Green Falcons (English to Amharic and back)

BG’s fight song is fairly straightforward, so call us baffled when translations turn Falcons into Horsemen. And that’s only one weird thing about this translation.

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Buffalo Bulls (English to Catalan and back)

Two words: cheerleading anime.

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Central Michigan Chippewas (English to Japanese and back)

Translating the “Fighting Chippewa” to Japanese really brings out 1) the intensity and 2) the politeness out of this particular crowd, whgich extolls the Chippewa faithful to “become the truth.”

Also “field down” reminds me of the English one might find in “Under Night In-Birth”, which is a game you need to play immediately.

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Eastern Michigan Eagles (English to Slovak and back)

Turning the song into Slovak makes it slightly more passive-aggressive, but it’s honestly worth it for RAH being translated into a certain four-letter word and fighting for emu oils.

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Kent State Golden Flashes (English to Scottish Gaelic and back)

Kent State, as we know, is rebuilding with new first-year head coach Sean Lewis. This translation just may be the perfect motivation for the new crew.

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Miami University Redhawks (English to Latin and back)

It made sense to translate the fight song of one of the older and more prestigious universities in the country into Latin. Or, at least it did until it turned “Love and Honor” into.... whatever this is.

At least they are not always all over the ground.

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Northern Illinois Huskies (English to Finnish and back)

NIU running around saying “screw you, we’re getting money” is pretty apt considering how many times they busted up the MAC’s chances at a big pay day in recent years. Though the rather dramatic turn at the end is rather unexpected.

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Ohio University Bobcats (English to Dutch and back)

Honestly, I think this might actually be better than the real version.

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Toledo Rockets (English to Arabic and back)

It was amusing to watch most of the languages struggle with translating “U of Toledo” but the Arabic translation was perhaps the most amusing overall, as it turns the phrase into a Lenny from Yonkers calling into the Mike Francesa Show on WFAN.

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Western Michigan Broncos (English to Irish and back)

Joan Jett may not have given a damn about her bad reputation, but the Irish version of the Broncos seems pretty concerned about what others think of them.

I imagine many people may not like them i they remove the game though.