No, he didn't. Which facts? Which Bush?

There is a well known bug in certain versions of Windows that if you open Notepad, type any one of certain phrases like "bush hid the facts", "bush did the crimes", "cats are the elite", or "this app can break", then save it, close it, and reopen it, the text will display as featureless boxes or, if you have the right fonts installed, Chinese characters.

Some have tried to claim that this is some kind of conspiracy on the part of Microsoft, but the fact is it's a plain ordinary coincidence that lay undiscovered for years until someone stumbled upon it. See here for a good explanation of why it happens. In summary, the bug creates gibberish.

But since every Chinese character is a word with its own set of meanings, wouldn't the gibberish still be translatable? As a matter of fact, yes. Here's a Python script to turn English text (or any other input as long as it's ASCII/ANSI format) into Unicode characters. (Chinese not guaranteed.)

import sys

print("Enter some text:")
line = sys.stdin.readline()

if len(line) %2:
    line += " "

unicode = ""
for i in range(0, len(line), 2):
    low = ord(line[i])
    high = ord(line[i+1])
    char = chr(low + 256*high).strip()
    unicode += char

print(unicode)
            

When run, it will ask you for some text and then output the Unicode characters, which you can then copy-paste into Google Translate and find out what it says.

So, "Bush hid the facts" becomes 畂桳栠摩琠敨映捡獴, which Google does indeed translate to "The ancient tomb of the King of Mo" like in the video. Let's try some others. "Cats are the elite" = 慃獴愠敲琠敨攠楬整 = "The Roaring of the Wild Beast". Yup, got a point there! How about "this app can break": 桴獩愠灰挠湡戠敲歡 = "The drumstick strikes the drum; the sound resonates with a joyful beat." Beautiful. And "mourner's mistake hid the truth" = 潭牵敮❲⁳業瑳歡⁥楨⁤桴⁥牴瑵੨ = "The deep pool draws in the flowing waters, a scene of pure delight; the trees stand tall and majestic, their roots firmly anchored in the earth." Very poetic, although notice the Unicode is not entirely in Chinese.

As I was typing up this page, my roommate came home singing "I spend my days in conversation please be good to me", so I typed that into the script, translated it, and got, "⁉ What exactly is the purpose of this ritual?" 😂