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, English "sat on a wall" /ˈsætɒnəˈwɔːl/ is rendered as French "s'étonne aux Halles" [setɔnoɑl] '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. "what a big nose!" becomes "water bag noise".
Homophonic translation may be used to render proper nouns in a foreign language. A more elegant solution, when possible, is phono-semantic matching, which attempts to have closer semantics as well as the proper sound.
Alternatively, homophonic translation may be used for humorous purpose, 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.
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[edit] Examples
Frayer Jerker is a homophonic translation of the French Frère Jacques (1956).[1] 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), and David Melnick's Ancient Greek-English Men in Aida (1983).
Examples of homophonic transformation include Howard L. Chace's Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, published in book form in 1956.
Other names proposed for this genre include "allographic translation",[2] "transphonation", or (in French) "traducson",[3] but none of these is widely used.
Here is van Rooten's version of Humpty Dumpty:[4]
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Though the individual words are almost all correct French (but 'fallent' is a form of the non-existent verb *'faller'), and some passages follow standard syntax and are interpretable (though nonsensical), the result is in fact not meaningful French.
Ghil'ad Zuckermann's "Italo-Hebraic Homophonous Poem"[5] is meaningful in both Italian and Hebrew, "although it has a surreal, evocative flavour, and modernist style".[6]
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[edit] Song lyrics
Homophonic translations of song lyrics in music videos for comic effect—also known as soramimi—are popular on YouTube.
[edit] 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
- Soramimi, the reinterpretation of song lyrics by homophonic translation
- 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
[edit] References
- ^ Chace, Howard L. (1956). "Frayer Jerker". Anguish Languish [English Language]. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. OCLC 2539398. http://www.justanyone.com/allanguish.html#_Toc505953319. Retrieved 2009-11-28.
- ^ Bernard Dupriez, A Dictionary of Literary Devices: Gradus, A-Z, Toronto 1991. ISBN 0-8020-6803-0. p. 462.
- ^ cf. Genette, Gérard; Newman, Channa; Doubinsky, Claude. Palimpsests. pp. 40–41. http://books.google.com/books?id=KbYzNp94C9oC.
- ^ "Luis d'Antin van Rooten's Humpty Dumpty". The Guardian. 27 November 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/23/humpty-dumpty. Retrieved 27 November 2009.
- ^ Word Ways 36 (2003)
- ^ http://www.zuckermann.org/bilingual.html
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