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Soramimi (空耳?, "mishearing; (feigned) deafness") or Soramimi kashi (空耳歌詞?, misheard lyrics); is a Japanese term for homophonic translation of song lyrics, that is, interpreting lyrics in one language as similar-sounding lyrics in another language. A bilingual soramimi word play contrasts with a monolingual mondegreen or homophonic transformation.
An example would be the Moldovan band O-Zone's song "Dragostea din tei" (マイヤヒー, named from the words in the opening of the song), known on the web as the Numa Numa song. The refrain of the original song (in Romanian) is:
The soramimi version:
Japanese comedian Tamori has had a long-running "Soramimi Hour" segment on his TV program Tamori Club, where he and his co-host watch mini-skits based on soramimi kashi submitted by the audience. The following are examples from "Soramimi Hour": the real lyric, followed by the soramimi text in Japanese, followed by the Japanese text romanized, followed (in parentheses) by the English translation.
From Metallica's "Enter Sandman":
From Sean Paul's "Fire Links Intro":
From Wu-Tang Clan's "Wu-Tang: 7th Chamber":
From Michael Jackson's "Ghosts":
From Jim Croce's "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown":
From The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand":
From Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Benny the Bouncer":
From Scorpions' "You Give Me All I Need":
From Filippa Giordano's "Casta Diva":
From the Gipsy Kings' "Bem, Bem, María":
From Mudhoney's "Here Comes Sickness":
From the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Suck My Kiss":
Mike Sutton, a mondegreen director on YouTube with the username "Buffalax", has uploaded several non-English music videos edited to include subtitles of the written English approximation of the video's original language's sound. These include Internet memes such as:
The latter, involving the video for Prabhu Deva Sundaram's song, "Kalluri Vaanil" from the Indian Tamil movie, Pennin Manathai Thottu, has occasionally been referred to as "the web's hottest clip"[1] On the Internet, both the terms "Buffalaxed" and "Benny lava" are now synonymous with mondegreens, "words or phrases misheard in ways that yield new meanings."[2][3] Buffalax's account was closed in early 2011 for copyright violation complaints, and the videos (including those that were not copyright violations) were all deleted.
Soramimi transcription is also commonly used in animutations for comic effect.
The Palestinian patriotic song "Blādi, blādi" (بلادي بلادي "Motherland, Motherland") was intentionally "misheard" into Russian (as blyadi, blyadi = "whores, whores") and uploaded to YouTube with Russian subtitles. The resulting video became an instant hit on Russian-language websites and blogs with more than 2 million views, and a number of phrases from the Russian version (especially "No money, long bumblebee") became instant catchphrases. Below is the example of the chorus:
| Arabic (transliterated) | Russian | Russian (transliterated) | Russian translated |
|---|---|---|---|
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("blādi" in the original is dialect for standard Arabic bilādī بلادي = "my country".)
In another instance, a Russian-language cover of Tic Tic Tac, a popular soca/disco hit by Carrapicho, phonetically rendered the first phrase of the chorus, Bate forte o tambor, as Мальчик хочет в Тамбов (Malchik Hochet v Tambov = "A boy wants to go to Tambov").
In Germany, the act of finding misheard lyrics in songs is known as "Agathe Bauer". This came about because the lyrics to "I Got The Power" by Snap! sounds like "Agathe Bauer", a German woman's name.
Some popular examples are:
In Dutch, the act of finding misheard lyrics in songs is sometimes referred to as "Mama Appelsap". This is due to the item "Mama Appelsap" on the National Radio station 3FM, invented by DJ Timur Perlin. The name "Mama Appelsap" refers to the song "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" by Michael Jackson, because the lyrics "Mama-se mama-sa ma-ma-coo-sa" (in imitation of Soul Makossa by Manu Dibango) sound like "Mama say mama sa mama appelsap".
("Mama Appelsap" literally means "Momma apple juice".)
Some popular examples are:
In Danish, where translation is "oversættelse", literally over-setting, such a mistake is called an under-setting (Undersættelse). Some songs are made with deliberate soramimi, for example:
Also from Denmark, artist Benny Vigan Madsen has made a number of "illustrated" soramimi clips of national anthems, most popular among which the Red Army Choir's version of the USSR anthem, where the final line "Nas k torzhestvu kommunizma vedyot" (It leads us to the triumph of Communism) becomes "Pasta med sprut. Nå, kunne vi sparke en røv?" (Pasta with booze. So could we kick an ass?)
A number of internet videos exploit soramimi for Carmina Burana, juxtaposing the music with images appropriate to the supposed lyrics, for example showing four cans of tuna for "O Fortuna"[4]
In Mandarin Chinese, there is a joke based on Michael Jackson's "Beat It" which goes:
In Israel, soramimi flash clips of the song Dragostea din tei known as 'Dori Met' (דורי מת, Dori is dead) is very popular. The clips includes the misheard nonsensical lyrics (the first song is heard as 'Dori is dead, if you shoot him, Nadav Adler, amen to him...', the second as 'Maya she, Maya he, Maya ha, Maya haha! [...] Felix in a bill, sleep, sleep, hey!') and matching visual representations: in the first song, a boy named Dori is killed; on the second, pictures of Maya Buskila are shown with beards or with clown make-up, etc.
In Romania, the children's song "Pula Pula", by Brazilian singer Aline Barros became a sensation, getting airplay on major radios and spawning several YouTube parody videos[5] with Romanian soramimi lyrics, as "pula" means "penis" in Romanian and it is heavily repeated in the chorus.
In Poland, "Decade of Therion", a 1999 song of death metal band Behemoth, became a popular Internet meme when given soramimi lyrics. E.g. English phrase "We transgress the context of commonplaceness" has been interpreted in Polish as "Łyżwiarz wie, że kotek odkopał prezent" ('The ice-skater knows that the pussycat has dug up the present').
In Croatia (and Serbia), the title (and refrain) of Queen's song "Another One Bites the Dust" is often deliberately misinterpreted as "a Radovan baca daske", meaning "and Radovan (a male name) is throwing the planks". Similarly, The Police song "Message in a Bottle" is interpreted as "mesečina, bato" ('moonlight, o brother').