Israelites cross Red Sea into Malibu

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, European pop artists often grabbed onto a US hit song, translated it into the local language, and released it to snag a local hit in place of the original English version.

Occasionally something was lost in translation. A case in point. In 1966, French pop star Richard Anthony did a cover version of California Dreamin', the famous pop hit of the era. However, when the song was translated into French as La Terre Promise [The Promised Land], it seems to have become a song about the Exodus as you will see from the Google translation here.

Not quite the intention of the original lyrics, one suspects.