Soramimi

Soramimi(Không nhĩ,"thought to have heard", or "pretending to have not heard")is aJapaneseword that in the context of contemporary Japanese internet meme culture and its related slang is commonly used to refer to humorous homophonic reinterpretation, deliberately interpreting words as other similar-sounding words for comedy (similar to amondegreen,but done deliberately).

The word is more commonly used for its original, literal meaning.

The slang usage is derived from the long-running "Soramimi Hour" segment on Japanese comedianTamori's TV programTamori Club.Tamori is one of the "big three" televisioncomediansin Japan and is very influential.The segment, in which he and his co-host watch mini-skits based on submissions from fans, began in 1992.

In modern Japanese internet culture, soramimi also includes videos with subtitles of humorously misinterpreted subtitles or text transcripts that do the same. Unlikehomophonic translation,soramimi can be contained within a single language. An example of "soramimi" humor confined to Japanese can be seen in the songKaidoku Funōby the rock bandJinn,in which the lyrics "tōkankaku, hito no naka de"("feeling of distance, amongst people"), which are considered hard to make out by Japanese listeners, are intentionally misinterpreted as"gōkan da, futon no naka de"("it's rape, in a futon") for comedic reasons.

Soramimi applies to dialogue as well as song lyrics. For example, in the 2004 filmDownfall,whenAdolf Hitlersays "und betrogen worden",it is misrepresented as"oppai purun purun"("titty boing boing").

Soramimi humor was a staple in Japanese message board Flash animation culture from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s. It later became very popular onNiconico,a Japanese video-sharing website in which comments are overlaid directly onto the video, synced to specific playback times, allowing for soramimi subtitles to be easily added to any video.One such example is theMoldovanbandO-Zone's song "Dragostea Din Tei".The refrain of the original song (inRomanian) is:

Vrei să pleci dar nu mă, nu mă iei...

( "You want to leave but you don't want, don't want to take me..." )

Asoramimiversion, from the JapaneseFlashanimationMaiyahi,translates these words as:

Mễ さ! Mễ tửu だろう! Ẩm ま ẩm まイェイ!

Bei sa! Beishu darou! nomanoma-iei!

( "Rice, obviously! Rice wine, most likely! Drink drink yay!" )

See also

• Tamori
• Tamori Club
• Mondegreen– mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a different meaning
• Homophonic translation– where a text in one language is translated into a near-homophonic text in another language, with no attempt to preserve the original meaning.
• "Caramelldansen",a Swedish-language song that became a meme on the Japanese-speaking internet in part due to listeners' frequent use ofsoramimi
• Benny Lava,a soramimi of a song from the Tamil filmPennin Manathai Thottu

External links

• A list of past soramimi featured on "Soramimi Hour" (in Japanese)