Homophonic translation

Homophonic translation renders a text in one language into a near-homophonic text in another language, usually with no attempt to preserve the original meaning of the text. In one homophonic translation, for example, the English "sat on a wall" /ˈsætɒnəˈwɔːl/ is rendered as French "s'étonne aux Halles" [setɔnoɑl] (literally "is surprised at the Market"). More generally, homophonic transformation renders a text into a near-homophonic text in the same or another language: e.g., "recognize speech" could become "wreck a nice beach".[1]

Homophonic translation is generally used humorously, as bilingual punning (macaronic language). This requires the listener or reader to understand both the surface, nonsensical translated text, as well as the source text—the surface text then sounds like source text spoken in a foreign accent.

Homophonic translation may be used to render proper nouns in a foreign language. If an attempt is made to match meaning as well as sound, it is phono-semantic matching.

Examples

Frayer Jerker is a homophonic translation of the French Frère Jacques (1956).[2] Other examples of homophonic translation include some works by Oulipo (1960–), Frédéric Dard, Luis van Rooten's English-French Mots D'Heures: Gousses, Rames (1967), Louis Zukofsky's Latin-English Catullus Fragmenta (1969), Ormonde de Kay's English-French N'Heures Souris Rames (1980), John Hulme's German-English Morder Guss Reims: The Gustav Leberwurst Manuscript,[3] and David Melnick's Ancient Greek-English Men in Aida (1983).

Examples of homophonic transformation include Howard L. Chace's "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut", written in "Anguish Languish" (English Language) and published in book form in 1956.

A British schoolboy example of Dog Latin:[4]

Caesar adsum jam forte. Brutus aderat. Caesar sic in omnibus. Brutus sic enat.

Caesar had some jam for tea. Brutus 'ad a rat. Caesar sick in omnibus. Brutus sick in 'at.

I, Caesar, am already here, as it happens. Brutus was here also. Caesar is so in all things. Brutus so escapes.

Other names proposed for this genre include "allographic translation",[5] "transphonation", or (in French) "traducson",[6] but none of these is widely used.

Here is van Rooten's version of Humpty Dumpty:[7]

Humpty Dumpty Sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty Had a great fall. All the king's horses And all the king's men Couldn't put Humpty Together again.

Un petit d'un petit S'étonne aux Halles Un petit d'un petit Ah! degrés te fallent Indolent qui ne sort cesse Indolent qui ne se mène Qu'importe un petit Tout gai de Reguennes.

A little one of a little one Is surprised at the Market A little one of a little one Oh, degrees fail you! Lazy is he who leaves stops Lazy is he who is not led Who cares about a little one All happy with Reguennes

The individual words are all correct French. (*fallent is an obsolete form of the verb falloir; Reguennes is an invented proper name), and some passages follow standard syntax and are interpretable (though nonsensical), but the result is in fact not meaningful French.

The Italian rabbi Leon of Modena composed at age 13[8] an octave by the name of "Kinah Sh'mor", meaningful in both Hebrew and Renaissance Judeo-Italian, as an elegy for his teacher Moses della Rocca.[9] The first four verses are below.

Hebrew text[8]	Hebrew transliteration	Translation[9]	Judeo-Italian[8]	Roman-type Italian[8]	Translation[9]
קִינָה שְׁמוֹר. אוֹי מֶה כְּפַּס אוֹצֵר בּוֹ.	Kinah sh'mor. Oy, meh k'pas otzer bo,	Mark this lament! Ah, but the treasure of him has passed,	קִי נַאשֵׁי מור, אואִימֵי, קֵי ּפַאסוֹ אַצֵירבו!‎	Chi nasce muor, Oime, che pass'acerbo!	Whoever is born, dies. Ay, me! A bitter thing has come to pass!
כָּל טוֹב עֵילוֹם. כּוֹסִי אוֹר דִין אֶל צִילוֹ.	Kol tov eilom. Kosi or din el tzilo.	All his divine good! The shadow of God’s judgment falls on my cup of light.	קולטו וְאֵין לְ אומְ, קוסִי אורְדִינַה לְצְיֵילוֹ.‎	Colto vien l'huom, cosi ordin'il Cielo.	A man has been plucked, such is the decree of Heaven.
מֹשֶׁה, מוֹרִי, מֹשֶׁה יָקָר, דֶבֶר בּוֹ.	Moshe mori, Moshe, yakar, dever bo.	Moses my teacher, Moses, how precious all was in him,	מוסֵי מורי, מוסֵי, גְיָיה קַאר דֵי וֵירבו,‎	Mose morì, Mose gia car de verbo,	Moses has died, Moses, so precious of speech,
שָׂם תּוּשִׁיָה אוֹן. יוֹם כִּיפּוּר הוּא זֶה לוֹ.	Sam tushiyah on. Yom Kippur hu zeh lo.	How much resourcefulness and strength were there! This is his Day of Atonement.	סַאנְטו סִיאַה אונְיִי אום, קון פורו זֵילוֹ!‎	Santo sia ogn'huom, con puro zelo!	Sainted be he of all men, pure was his zeal!

Ghil'ad Zuckermann's "Italo-Hebraic Homophonous Poem"[10] is meaningful in both Italian and Hebrew, "although it has a surreal, evocative flavour, and modernist style".[11]

Translation from Italian	Italian-Hebrew	Translation from Hebrew
Libido, Eva, comes out of Nicolette: who gives the following: ...	Libido, Eva, ליבִּי דוֹאב, esce da האש עֵדה. Nicolet, אני קוֹלֵט che tale dá: קטע לידה ...	My heart is languishing, the fire is a witness. I am absorbing a stage of labour. ....

Here is another example of a sentence which has two completely different meanings if read in Latin or in Italian:

Sentence	Latin meaning	Italian meaning
I, Vitelli, dei Romani sono belli.	Go, Vitellius, at the Roman god's sound of war.	The Romans' veals are beautiful.

Mondegreen

Homophonic translations of song lyrics, often combined with music videos, for comic effect—also known as mondegreen—have gained popularity on the internet.

Soramimi

Homophonic translation and reinterpretation for humor is known as soramimi in Japan. Unlike Homophonic translation, it can be applied to the same language, and unlike mondegreen, it is not confined to song lyrics.

See also

• Holorime, a form of rhyme where the entire line or phrase is repeated by a homophonic variant
• Mondegreen, the erroneous interpretation of language by homophony
• Mots d'Heures
• Soramimi homophonic reinterpretation for humor
• Phono-semantic matching (PSM), a borrowing in which a foreign word is matched with a phonetically and semantically similar pre-existent native word/root.
• Translation
• Mairzy Doats

References

1. An often-used example in the literature of speech recognition. An early example is N. Rex Dixon, "Some Problems in Automatic Recognition of Continuous Speech and Their Implications for Pattern Recognition" Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference on Pattern Recognition, IEEE, 1973 as quoted in Mark Liberman, "Wrecking a nice beach", Language Log August 5, 2014
2. Chace, Howard L. (1956). "Frayer Jerker". Anguish Languish [English Language]. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. OCLC 2539398.
3. 1981; ISBN 0517545594
4. the first line is quoted by Nigel Molesworth in Down With Skool 1953, by Geoffrey Willans, illustrated by Ronald Searle, p. 41.
5. Bernard Dupriez, A Dictionary of Literary Devices: Gradus, A-Z, Toronto 1991. ISBN 0-8020-6803-0. p. 462.
6. cf. Genette, Gérard; Newman, Channa; Doubinsky, Claude. Palimpsests. pp. 40–41.
7. "Luis d'Antin van Rooten's Humpty Dumpty". The Guardian. 27 November 2009. Retrieved 27 November 2009.
8. Aaron D. Rubin (2017). "Judeo-Italian". In Kahn, Lily; Rubin, Aaron D. (eds.). Handbook of Jewish Languages (2 ed.). Leiden, the Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. pp. 343–345. ISBN 978-90-04-34577-5.
9. Philologos. "When the Second Verse Is Same as the First in Hebrew". The Forward. Forward Association. Retrieved 10 January 2018.
10. Word Ways 36 (2003)
11. http://www.zuckermann.org/bilingual.html