History Main / TranslatedCoverVersion

* Some snippets of Takeshi's (Brock's) image/ED song from ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'', "Takeshi's Paradise," were adapted into the English dub wherever it was played as an InsertSong in Japanese.

* Music/DirEnGrey's "Dozing Green" and "Glass Skin" were released as singles in Japanese, but appeared on their ''Uroboros'' album in English. The original Japanese versions were included as bonus tracks.

* Creator/FUNimation did this quite frequently on their anime dubs. ''Manga/FruitsBasket'', ''Manga/CaseClosed'' and ''Manga/OuranHighSchoolHostClub'', for just three examples, all include English-dubbed covers of their original themes. One dubbed episode of ''[[LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' has Creator/WendeeLee singing the English version of the song played at the talent show.

* Cantonese anime dubs will occasionally come with a dubbed version of the opening theme. Examples include ''Manga/{{Doraemon}}'', ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'', ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'', and ''LightNovel/TheStoryOfSaiunkoku''.

* Australian pop singer Sophie Monk's [[https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=gP9cwMwh11U Come My Way]] was covered by Namie Amuro as "Come" and used as the 7th end theme for ''Manga/InuYasha''.

* After The Fire's "Der Kommissar" is an English cover of a German song originally done by Falco. The title and the line "Alles klar, Herr Kommisar?" are the only parts that weren't translated. Laura Branigan recorded a different English version titled "Deep in the Dark" a year later.

* "Gloria" by Laura Branigan was originally an Italian song by Umberto Tozzi. Branigan's version isn't a straight cover, though; her Gloria is a lonely, promiscuous loser and the lyrics are sarcastic and contemptuous, while Tozzi's original gushes almost worshipfully about a woman who is waaaaay out of his league.

** "Self Control," Branigan's biggest international hit is sometimes confused as a translation because of the credit "English lyrics by Steve Piccolo" being used. The song was only recorded in English by its composer RAF in his native Italy. Both songs were released around the same time, in some countries even taking two spots on the upper regions of the chart, but with Branigan's version besting RAF's everywhere but Italy. The song was later translated to Spanish for an early Music/RickyMartin song, "Que Dia es Hoy."

* The original "Macarena" was in Spanish. A popular version (the "Bayside Boys Mix", which was ''Billboard'' magazine's No. 1 single of 1996) exists with English lyrics.
* "Aserejé" ("The Ketchup Song"), by Spanish group Las Ketchup, has a Brazilian Portuguese cover.

* Following the [[MemeticMutation memetic resurgence]] of Mariya Takeuchi's long-lost J-pop single "Plastic Love" on Website/YouTube, Caitlin "mom0ki" Myers [[https://youtu.be/vunm-W-ovLc recorded an English cover]]. She has also done [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW61VTLhNjQ a Japanese citypop version]] of Music/RickAstley's famous "Never Gonna Give You Up" with annapantsu, [=LilyPichu=] and Lizz Robinett.

* Brazillian musician Seu Jorge recorded five Brazilian Portuguese versions of Music/DavidBowie songs for the soundtrack of ''Film/TheLifeAquaticWithSteveZissou'' (which are sung by his character in the film) - only the version of "Starman" was an [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auAGPN_keDs already existing one]], the rest translated by him. Said songs (along with 7 more translated covers) were eventually released in the album ''The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions Featuring Seu Jorge''.

* Leslie Grace did a [[https://youtu.be/qpXdFNfAjww Spanglish cover]] of [[Music/RonnieSpector The Ronettes]]' "Be My Baby" in 2013.

* [[Music/HelloProject Morning Musume's]] "Summer Night Town" was originally done in Japanese but was then covered by label mates Coconuts Musume in English, barring part of the chorus. Group member Kusumi Koharu's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBuDK88vWWw Koi kana]]" becames Laura Vanamo's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMjZHGBJgmk Se tunne]]". That's not Japanese, that's Finnish!

* "Ue wo muite arukou" ("Sukiyaki") by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtXQ31F1A-k Kyu Sakamoto]] (1963) has had quite a few English translations, including one by Clyde Beavers (1963, as "I Look Up When I Walk"), one by Jewel Akens (1966, as "My First Lonely Night") and one by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqFkUNqBwMw A Taste of Honey]] (1981) which was later covered by 4PM (1994) and G.H. Hat (2018) and interpolated by Music/MaryJBlige in her hit "Everything" (1997). The original Japanese song was about someone wandering while looking up and whistling so that their tears wouldn't fall. While the Beavers and Akens covers kept close to the original story, the lyrics used by A Taste of Honey/4PM/G.H. Hat have little to do with the original's. [[note]](According to A Taste of Honey vocalist Janice-Marie Johnson, this was because a literal translation of the original Japanese lyrics would have yielded incomplete sentences, though strangely this didn't stop the writers of the Beavers and Akens versions from doing much more faithful translations)[[/note]] In turn, Music/{{Selena}} did a Spanish cover of the Taste of Honey version at one point.

* What Dion was to the 1990s, Connie Francis was to the 1960s. She has done covers of some of her songs in multiple languages such as Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, and Romanian. Aside from English, she was fluent in Spanish and Italian (she is of Italian descent); the other languages she learned to sing phonetically. Other artists did covers of one of her songs in Finnish, Swedish, and Portuguese. The song "Strangers In The Night", which was originally offered to her but was first recorded by Music/FrankSinatra, was later recorded by her in Spanish. She sang English covers for songs such as "Never On Sunday", "Solamente Una Vez (You Belong To My Heart)", "Al Di La", and "La Vie En Rose" with some of the lyrics in the original language.
** Interestingly, Francis' Japanese-language renditions of her hits competed in that market with covers by domestic pop star Mieko Hirota, who became known as "the Japanese Connie Francis."

* Music/TheBeatles re-released a couple of their early hits in German - [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4NLqkv-J4k "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand"]] ("I Want to Hold Your Hand") and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVF-WyrwPI8 "Sie Liebt Dich"]] ("She Loves You").
** In a more comic vein, during the recording of "Get Back" they recorded a version in bad German: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAJnY2bG7nQ "Geh Rous]]".

** "Self Control," Branigan's biggest international hit is sometimes confused as a translation because of the credit "English lyrics by Steve Piccolo" being used. The song was only recorded in English by its composer RAF in his native Italy. Both songs were released around the same time, in some countries even taking two spots on the upper regions of the chart, but with Branigan's version besting RAF's everywhere but Italy.
*** The song was later translated to Spanish for an early Music/RickyMartin song, "Que Dia es Hoy."

* Stef Carse, a now-forgotten French-Canadian country singer, had a one-hit wonder in the early 1990s with a French rendition of Music/BillyRayCyrus's "Achy Breaky Heart" called "Achy Breaky Dance", dance moves included.

* Petula Clark translated many of her English-language songs into French, Spanish and Italian. "Downtown" is the best known of those.
** On a related note, "I Will Follow Him" is an English cover of Petula Clark's French-language song "Chariot."

* [[Music/HelloProject Morning Musume's]] "Summer Night Town" originally done in Japanese but was then covered by label mates Coconuts Musume in translated into English, barring part of the chorus.
** Kusumi Koharu's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBuDK88vWWw Koi kana]]" becomes Laura Vanamo's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMjZHGBJgmk Se tunne]]". That's not Japanese, that's Finnish!
* "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (aka "Wemaweh" and "In the Jungle") was originally a Zulu pop song from South Africa -- which caused some controversy (years later), as the original writer and performers got no credit for the cover and never saw a cent from it.
** The English version was later adapted in French - under the title "The Lion ''Died'' Tonight". Okay...

** Also "Aserejé" ("The Ketchup Song"), by Spanish group Las Ketchup, which also has a Brazilian Portuguese cover.

* "Ue wo muite arukou" ("Sukiyaki") by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtXQ31F1A-k Kyu Sakamoto]] (1963) has had quite a few English translations, including one by Clyde Beavers (1963, as "I Look Up When I Walk"), one by Jewel Akens (1966, as "My First Lonely Night") and one by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqFkUNqBwMw A Taste of Honey]] (1981) which was later covered by 4PM (1994) and G.H. Hat (2018) and interpolated by Music/MaryJBlige in her hit "Everything" (1997). The original Japanese song was about someone wandering while looking up and whistling so that their tears wouldn't fall. While the Beavers and Akens covers kept close to the original story, the lyrics used by A Taste of Honey/4PM/G.H. Hat have little to do with the original's. [[note]](According to A Taste of Honey vocalist Janice-Marie Johnson, this was because a literal translation of the original Japanese lyrics would have yielded incomplete sentences, though strangely this didn't stop the writers of the Beavers and Akens versions from doing much more faithful translations)[[/note]]
** Music/{{Selena}} did a Spanish cover of the Taste of Honey version at one point.

* Creator/FUNimation did this quite frequently on their anime dubs. ''Manga/FruitsBasket'', ''Manga/CaseClosed'' and ''Manga/OuranHighSchoolHostClub'', for just three examples, all include English-dubbed covers of their original themes.
** A little different, but one dubbed episode of ''[[LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' has Creator/WendeeLee singing the English version of the song played at the talent show

* The Disney XD UK broadcast of the 2005 ''Manga/{{Doraemon}}'' anime featured an English adaptation of the Japanese OP song "Yume wo Kanaete Doraemon." The American dub, however, featured a narration by Doraemon's US voice actor, Creator/MonaMarshall, over a series of clips from the series in place of an opening song.
** The US dub episode "Big Boys Do Cry," however, did feature an adaptation of Sneech's (Suneo's) "Rich Kid Mambo" song from the original episode, sung as "The Big Sneech Mambo" by his US voice actor, Creator/BrianBeacock.

** They also recorded "Ring Ring", "Another Town, Another Train" and "Waterloo" in German. The reason they did this was that they were aiming for a European market who wouldn't necessarily speak English. As it happened, German fans already liked the English versions and they didn't bother doing any more after that.
*** They wrote Ring Ring deliberately around this trope - the title phrase is onomatopoeic and so can be used no matter what language the song is translated into.

* Gloria Gaynor recorded a Spanish version of "I Will Survive" called "Yo viviré".
** There's also a version in Arabic. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ca5N55QzGs Haifa Wehbe - Adra Ayeesh]]

* France Gall's Series/EurovisionSongContest winning "Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son" was self-covered in Japanese as "Yume Miru Chanson Ningyou". She also recorded it in German and Italian, and covers also exist by other artists in just about every language under the sun, with an English rendition, "A Little Singing Doll," done by British singer Twinkle.
** Likewise her "Laisse tomber les filles" ("Dump the girls") found new life as April March's "Chick Habit" in ''Film/ButImACheerleader'' and more famously, ''Film/{{Grindhouse}}:'' ''Film/DeathProof''.

* There is an album of various Japanese artists covering Music/SimonAndGarfunkel, mostly in Japanese.
** There is also [[http://www.discogs.com/Various-Outlandos-DAmericas-Tributo-A-Police-A-Tribute-To-The-Police/release/1253254 one by Latin American artists]] covering Music/ThePolice in Spanish.

* The theme tune to ''VideoGame/PlantsVsZombies'' has three versions, the original English, a Japanese version both done by Laura Shigihara and a Spanish version.

* UsefulNotes/HongKong singer Faye Wong did a Cantonese version of Music/ToriAmos' "Silent All These Years".
** She also performed a Cantonese version of Music/TheCranberries' ''Dreams'', for Creator/WongKarWai's ''Film/ChungkingExpress''.

* The Grass Roots song "Let's Live For Today" is a cover of the Italian "Piangi Con Me" by The Rokes (who, ironically, were an English-speaking British group residing in Italy)
** For added translation fun, the song was ALSO a Japanese hit by The Tempters under the title "Kyō Wo Ikiyō".

* Lots of Italian singers have covered their hits in Spanish: Adamo, Adriano Celentano, Franco Battiato, Eros Ramazzotti, Nek...
** But very few Spanish musicians have self-covered their songs in Italian. A few of the most popular cases are singer Miguel Bosé (son of Italian actress Lucia Bosé) and pop group Music/{{Mecano}}, who recorded their song "Hijo de la Luna" (“Son of the Moon”) in French and Italian, in addition to the Spanish original.
** Laura Pausini is an extreme case, to the point that her career has been built in this trope. After her second studio album, she released a recopilatory of all her singles she sung in Spanish, and that album sold '''so''' well than from her third onwards she releases each studio album in Italian and Spanish simultaneously.
*** And a few of those songs have also been recorded in English as well - two in particular appear on her English album, ''From the Inside''.

* Music/MunchenerFreiheit did a German version of Music/BobDylan's "Baby Blue".

* ''Series/BarneyAndFriends'' occasionally uses foreign-language nursery rhymes translated into English and vice versa, usually in episodes about different cultures:
** The episode "Hola Mexico!" features translated cover versions of "La Rueda de San Miguel" and "Dale, Dale, Dale!" (dubbed "San Miguel's Ring" and the "Piñata Song" respectively).
* Following the [[MemeticMutation memetic resurgence]] of Mariya Takeuchi's long-lost J-pop single "Plastic Love" on Website/YouTube, Caitlin "mom0ki" Myers [[https://youtu.be/vunm-W-ovLc recorded an English cover]].
** She has also done [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW61VTLhNjQ a Japanese citypop version]] of Music/RickAstley's famous "Never Gonna Give You Up" with annapantsu, [=LilyPichu=] and Lizz Robinett.

* Leslie Grace did a Spanglish cover of [[Music/RonnieSpector The Ronettes]]' "Be My Baby" in 2013.

** Caballo Dorado produced a Spanish version titled "No rompas más mi pobre corazón", and then
a [[MultilingualSong bilingual version]] with Billy Ray Cyrus himself in 2017 for [[MilestoneCelebration the song's 25th anniversary]].

** Caballo Dorado produced a Spanish version titled "No rompas más mi pobre corazón", which in turn was re-recorded as a MultilingualSong with Billy Ray Cyrus himself in 2017 for the songs 25th anniversary.

** Caballo Dorado produced a Spanish version titled "No rompas más mi pobre corazón", which in turn was re-recorded with Billy Ray Cyrus himself in 2017 for the songs 25th anniversary.

* Music/BonnieTyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was covered in Spanish as "Eclipse Total del Amor" by Cuban singer Lissette Álvarez Chorens just two years after its original release, then Mexican singer Yuridia covered that version in 2006. Tyler herself recorded a French-English duet version titled "Si demain (Turn Around)" with Kareen Antonn in 2003.

* There was a tribute album to L'arc~en~Ciel with mostly English language covers of their songs by artists such as TLC, Daniel Powter, Vince Neil, Orianthi, Boyz II Men, and more.

* Music/BonnieTyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was covered in Spanish as "Eclipse total del amor" by Cuban singer Lissette Álvarez Chorens just a year after its original release, then Mexican singer Yuridia covered that version in 2006. Tyler herself recorded a French-English duet version titled "Si demain (Turn Around)" with Kareen Antonn in 2003.

* Music/BonnieTyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was covered in Spanish as "Eclipse total del amor" by Cuban singer Lissette Álvarez Chorens just a year after its original release, while Tyler herself recorded a French-English duet version titled "Si demain (Turn Around)" with Kareen Antonn in 2003.

* Italian singer-songwriter Domenico Modugno's 1958 Italian-language song "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nel_blu,_dipinto_di_blu_(song) Nel blu, dipinto di blu]]" ("From the blue that is painted blue") ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRF5zSczYEs audio]])--[[RefrainFromAssuming better known as "Volare"]] ("Let's fly")--has been covered in at least seven languages. Possibly the most famous is Music/DeanMartin's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejzDJkUXgdw cover]], released the same year, which is partly in English and partly the original Italian (a firm but inoffensive assertion of Martin's pride in his Italian heritage).[[note]]Martin spoke Italian (or more probably Neapolitan--his father was from Abruzzo, and his mother was Italian-American of probable Southern Italian ancestry) as his first language. He learned English at school, an was bullied in his childhood for his then-poor command of English. The real linguistic "screw you" in Dino's version of the song is actually in the ''Italian'' lyrics, where it appears he deliberately sang them in a Neapolitan accent--e.g. by voicing certain consonants, particularly pronouncing "cantare" as "gantare"--to bug uppity Northern Italians.[[/note]]

* Creator/WongKarWai's 1988 debut film ''As Tears Go By'' features a Cantonese cover of ''Take My Breath Away'', originally featured in English in the 1986 film ''Film/TopGun''. The Cantonese version is performed by Cantopop singer Sandy Lam, who also performed the Cantonese theme song for ''Manga/NausicaaOfTheValleyOfTheWind''.