Mairzy Dotes... x: Preparing for Winter-een-mas

Hi Herman (Herman Miller), in <43C9E5D0.6000707@...> on Jan 15 you wrote:

> Arthaey Angosii wrote:
> > Anyone else feel moved by the spirit of Winter-een-mas? :)
>
> How about a game title translation project?
>
> Well, there are some titles that can't be translated as much as borrowed
> in transliterated form. What exactly is a "Bosconian", for instance? The
> word brings to mind the Italian word "bosco" (forest), but the game
> doesn't have anything to do with forests. So a title like this could
> just be borrowed as is. Making assumptions about the correct
> pronunciation, this could be "Baskónian" in Minza, but I'm inclined to
> go with the spelling and call it "Boskónian". I'll have to decide the
> form of the borrowing on a case by case basis. Other names of this sort:
>
> Galaga - Gálaga
> Ico - Iko
> Pikmin - Pikmin
> Tetris - Tetris
>
> "Katamari Damacy" could be translated, but it isn't in the English
> version, so why not just borrow the name directly in Minza? "Katamari
> Dámaši" follows the Japanese pronunciation "katamari damashii" (Minza
> doesn't mark long vowels).
>
> Then there are names which can be translated in part. "Pac-Man" could
> have the "man" part translated. "Pokémon" is short for "Pocket
> Monsters", which could be translated. But it might be best just to
> borrow these names: Pakman, Pókemon. (Pókemon follows the stress pattern
> of English /'pokiman/, since I don't know how the name is stressed in
> Japanese. But "poketto", the Japanese word for pocket, has the high
> pitch on the second syllable.)
[Snipped the rest of the discussion...]

This brings to mind another matter I came across once:

Consider the children's song "Mairzy Dotes" (or whatever the thing was
called), which is also known by the title "Mares Eat Oats."

The first verse of the song starts out:

"Mares eat oats and lambs eat oats and little lambs eat ivy..."

However, it is also rendered:

"Mairzy dotes and lamzee dotes and little lamzee dyvey..."

(or something very close to that)

In non-English countries, they actually sing the song exactly the same as
we do, with the sounds written out phonetically like above, and probably
without the kids knowing that the song is actually English language stuff
done phonetically!  :-D

Crazy world, innit!  :-)

Anyone else know any other examples of this sort of thing?

I suppose 1000 years from now, when English is long gone, we'll probably
still be singing the same song, phonetically unchanged...  }giggle{

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