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" is rendered as French "s'étonne aux Halles" . 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".
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. 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.
Examples
Frayer Jerker is a homophonic translation of the French Frère Jacques. Other examples of homophonic translation include some works by Oulipo, Frédéric Dard, Luis van Rooten's English-French ', Louis Zukofsky's Latin-English Catullus Fragmenta, Ormonde de Kay's English-French N'Heures Souris Rames, John Hulme's German-English Morder Guss Reims: The Gustav Leberwurst Manuscript, and David Melnick's Ancient Greek-English Men in Aida.Hierosolyma', the Greco-Roman name for Jerusalem, is an example of this phenomenon, where the Hebrew "Yeru", which means "City of" is reinterpreted as the Greek "Hiero", which means "Holy".
Examples of homophonic transformation include Howard L. Chace's "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut", written in "Anguish Languish" and published in book form in 1956.
A British schoolboy example of Dog Latin:
Other names proposed for this genre include "allographic translation", "transphonation", or "traducson", but none of these is widely used.
Here is van Rooten's version of Humpty Dumpty:
The individual words are all correct French., and some passages follow standard syntax and are interpretable, but the result is in fact not meaningful French.
The Italian rabbi Leon of Modena composed at age 13 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. The first four verses are below.
| Hebrew text | Hebrew transliteration | Translation | Judeo-Italian | Roman-type Italian | Translation |
| Kinah sh'mor. Oy, meh k'pas otzer bo, | Mark this lament! Ah, but the treasure of him has passed, | Chi nasce muor, Oime, che pass'acerbo! | Whoever is born, dies. Ay, me! A bitter thing has come to pass! | ||
| Kol tov eilom. Kosi or din el tzilo. | All his divine good! The shadow of God’s judgment falls on my cup of light. | Colto vien l'huom, cosi ordin'il Cielo. | A man has been plucked, such is the decree of Heaven. | ||
| Moshe mori, Moshe, yakar, dever bo. | Moses my teacher, Moses, how precious all was in him, | Mose morì, Mose gia car de verbo, | Moses, my teacher, Moses, so precious of speech, | ||
| Sam tushiyah on. Yom Kippur hu zeh lo. | How much resourcefulness and strength were there! This is his Day of Atonement. | 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" is meaningful in both Italian and Hebrew, "although it has a surreal, evocative flavour, and modernist style".
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. |