There is no cover of Canadian pop singer Justin Bieber’s hit What Do You Mean quite like that of the US-based video producer Kayla Nguyen. Screen-captured image of US-based video content producer Kayla Nguyenfrom her music video cover of Canadian singer Justin Bieber’s song “What Do You Mean”. With a conical hat on her head, a pair of sunglasses, and a traditional Vietnamese long dress áo dài, she sings in a way that sounds nothing like the original, while playing a plucked zither (đàn tranh). This is Kayla’s Vietnamese reformed opera (cải lương) version of the song, which has garnered some 1.7 million views and become her most viewed video since it was uploaded to her personal YouTube channel, Vietglish Fun, three months ago. Kayla Nguyen (Nguyen Thien Nhu), 25, is a Vietnamese American born and raised in Philadelphia, the US. She recently rose to virtual stardom when the videos of herself providing spontaneous, word for word translations of English pop songs into Vietnamese, spread over social media. A video and media arts graduate, Kayla wrote, filmed and edited all the videos herself. Her YouTube channel was started in 2014 as the result of a translation challenge from her younger sister. “She asked me if I could translate the lyrics of Britney Spears’ song Oops I Did It Again, word for word, into Vietnamese,” Kayla said in one of her first videos on the channel. “I did it, and she started laughing like crazy.” Since then, she has posted numerous…
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