Apparently, our plantain quota is sub-optimal...

This site is dedicated to bringing to a wider world audience the English music hall song "Yes! We Have no Bananas" (hell, it's almost a folksong after all). In order that peoples around the world shold be able at long last to benefit from its brilliance, BananasToday provides a glimpse of the song translated into as many different languages as we can muster. As you can see, we have a good few still to go, so if you're a cunning linguist, please drop us a line with a new translation or two.

The full text of the song can be found here.

English	Yes, we have no bananas; We have no bananas today.
Catalan	Sí, no tenim plàtans; no tenim plàtans avui.
Chinese (Mandarin)	是, 我们不食用香蕉; 今天我们不食用香蕉
Creole	Nou n' a pa des banaan, pas des banaan ozordi!
Dutch	Ja, wij hebben geen bananen, wij hebben geen bananen vandaag!
Esperanto	Jes, ni no havas bananojn; No havas bananojn hodiaŭ
Finnish	Kyllä, meillä ei ole banaaneja, meillä ei ole banaaneja tänään.
Flemish	Ja, wij hebben geen bananen; wij hebben geen bananen vandaag!
French	Oui, nous n'avons pas des bananes; Nous n'avons pas des bananes aujourd-hui.
Gaelic (Irish)	Seadh, níl bananaí ar bith againn; Níl bananaí ar bith againn inniu
German	Ja haben wir keine Bananen; Wir haben keine Bananen heute.
Hebrew	כן! אין לנו בננות אין לנו בננות היום Ken! Ein lanu bananot Ein lanu bananot hayom
Hindi	Han, hamare pas kele nahin hain, hamare pas aaj kele nahin hain.
Italian	Sì, non abbiamo banane; Non abbiamo oggi banane.
Japanese	Hai, banana wa arimasen; Kyo wa banana wa arimasen. はい、バナナはありません。今日はバナナはありません。
Korean	그렇다, 우리에는 바나나가 없다; 오늘 우리에는 바나나가 없 다
Malay	Ya, kami tiada pisang; kami tiada pisang hari ini
Norwegian	Ja, vi har ingen bananer; Vi har ingen bananer i dag
Polish	Tak, nie mamy zadnych bananow; nie mamy zadnych bananow, dzisiaj.
Portugese	Sim, nós não temos nenhuma banana; Nós não temos nenhuma banana hoje.
Punjabi	Hahn, apene kol kele ne hain, apene kol kele ne hain ahj.
Russian	Da, u nas niet nikakih-to babanov, U nas niet nikakih-to babanov, cevodnia.
Serbo-Croat	Da, nemamo banana; danas nemamo banana.
Slovenian	Ja, nimamo banan; danes nimamo banan.
Spanish	Sí, no tenemos plátanos; No tenemos plátanos hoy.
Swahili	Ndio! Hakuna Ndisi, Hakuna Ndisi Leo!
Swedish	Ja, vi har inga bananer; Vi har inga bananer idag.
Tegalog (Philipino)	Oo wala na kaming mga saging, wala mang saging ngayon.
Welsh	Nagyw, does gennym banana; does gennym banana heddiw.

Thanks to all the friends, relatives, clients & friends of friends who have provided the translations!

If you could supply any more translations, especially unusual languages, I'd be eternally grateful - well, almost. Please use the form on the right.

Original idea, web site & hosting by Jon Silver. Contact me with new translations, praise, abuse, gratitude, money or offers of sexual favours.

Republished from my blog article about this site's history.

Many years ago, when I was still a teenager, I decided to translate the lyrics of a song. The only language I knew at the time apart from my mother-tongue English was a smattering of school French. But nonetheless I had enough French to do it. And the song? The most ridiculous thing I could find, which was “Yes we have no bananas, we have no bananas today”.To my none-too-great surprise, the French lyric fitted none too well. So, I wondered would other languages fare any better? German soon followed, the “heute” translation for “today” proving especially awful in terms of its lyrical quality. Wondering further, I started to collect translations from lots of different languages. Of course pretty soon they dried up. The whole project was forgotten, especially when I discovered girls. Much more interesting.

Eventually along came the Internet, and one day when I was bored (it happens a lot) I decided to register a new domain name bananastoday.co.uk and its somewhat less rhyming bananastoday.com and create a web site where I could once again collect translations for the beloved lyric. Of course I never had any visitors, which made the whole thing rather sad. Actually I did get a few. I even received the Klingon translation. I kid ye not. Someone actually bothered not only to translate the song lyric into Klingon, which is enough of a feat by itself… but what truly amazed me is that someone else had even gone to the trouble of creating a Klingon word for “banana”. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but Worf in Star Trek never used the word “banana” in American English, let alone Klingon. Hmmm. I think they could be making it up as they go along.

I actually lost the Klingon translation somewhere along the way before it had a chance to enter the archive. If you were the originator, or indeed if your Klingon is up to the task, perhaps you’d oblige.

Anyway, I digress… as usual. The site still exists and there are still a lot of translations I’ve yet to collect. So if you’re a specialist in one particular language, or indeed several, please take the time and trouble to visit the site and use all your incredible language skills and long years of study to translate just one line from an old music hall song into the languages of your choice. Oh go on. Please. You know you want to. Don’t make me beg now.

You can find the Internationally-Localised Version Of Yes We Have No Bananas at www.bananastoday.co.uk. If you have been, thanks for reading.

 

November 18th, 2008: Many thanks to Sookjin Ong for a Malay version of "Yes, We Have No Bananas"; one day we'll have made it around the whole of South-East Asia!

July 11th, 2008: My assistant Anuja has provided a viable phonetic Punjabi translation, and one day when we get one of the Punjabi phonetic entry tools for Windows to work properly, we may even display it in the correct character set.

July 11th, 2008: The site's popularity appears to be growing, as more and more people across the world realise how empty their lives were without it. Dan is the latest to contribute, with a Hebrew translation which, as Dan rightly points out, scans perfectly just like the English version. Could the Hebrew origins of the song's writers (Cohn & Silver) have something to do with that? Or perhaps a hidden and previously unknown relationship between Hebrew and English? We can only speculate. Linguistic academics apply here.

June 30th, 2008: Our Scandinavian language selection has expanded slightly thanks to Nick Hasselgreen and his Norwegian banana translation. If only there were a true Viking version too.

May 10th, 2008: Brian Pitts has contributed the Esperanto translation, so now we have our favourite song lyric in the original unified Euro-language! Thanks Brian!

January 3rd, 2008: Thanks to Alex and Graham respectively, we now have Catalan and Finnish translations for our song's main lyric. Are there any more translations out there?

This site costs a lot to run. If you like bananas and would like to support the site for the benefit of other banana-lovers (or indeed lovers of translated music hall songs) then please use the button below to make a modest donation. Thanks.

If you like this site, and would like to encourage more people to visit us and enjoy the enrichment of a translated song about bananas, please feel free to link to us!

www.bananastoday.co.uk

Our links page is here