"The Sound of Music" across three languages

You may well be familiar with The Sound of Music, an American musical from the 1950s loosely based on the von Trapp family's memoirs. It features a neat little song for teaching musical notes, "Do, a Deer", which has been translated into a number of languages. Let's contrast three versions - English, Japanese, and Arabic - and see what they suggest.

English	Japanese	Arabic
Do, a deer, a female deer,	ドはドーナツのド Do is for "donut" (dōnatsu),	دو دروب ومعاني Do is "paths" (durūb) and meanings,
Re, a drop of golden sun;	レはレモンのレ Re is for "lemon" (remon);	ري ربيع الأغنيات Re is a "spring" (rabīʕ) of songs;
Mi, a name I call myself,	ミはみんなのミ Mi is for "everyone" (minna);	مي مـوسيقى وأغاني Mi, "music" (mūsīqā) and songs;
Fa, a long long way to run;	ファはファイトのファ Fa is for "fight" (faito);	فا فـجر الذكريات Fa, a "dawn" (fajr) of memories;
So, a needle pulling thread;	ソは青い空 So is blue "sky" (sora);	صوتنا ملء الفضاء Our "sound" (ṣawt) is a filling up of space;
La, a note to follow So;	ラはラッパのラ Ra is for "trumpet" (rappa);	لم يزل فينا الوفاء In us is "still" (lam tazal) loyalty;
Ti, a drink with jam and bread;	シは幸せよ Si is "happiness" (shiawase)	سوف تبقى يا غناء You, O song, "shall" (sawfa) remain;
That will bring us back to Do!	さぁ歌いましょう So let us sing!	لنغنّي نغنّي.. لحن الحياة Let us sing, sing... the tune of life!

As should be obvious, the Arabic version is derived from the Japanese one (via a popular anime of the 1990s) rather than directly from the English one. However, it contrasts sharply with both in the choice of note-mnemonics. In English, each note name (well, except "la") is mapped directly to a near-homophonous monosyllabic word, taking advantage of English's relatively short minimal word length; most of these are widely familiar, high-frequency items. In Japanese, the word choices are necessarily longer and perhaps more obscure (the syllable fa is found only in relatively recent loanwords anyway), but in each case the note is mapped perfectly to the first syllable of a single word, usually referring to something readily visualisable. In Arabic, the note is again mapped (increasingly approximatively) to the first syllable, not of a word, but of a 2-4 word phrase; not a single one of these phrases refers to anything concrete enough to visualise. High-flown slogans replace the original's homely whimsy.

I have no way of proving it, but I believe this is symptomatic - certainly of the Arabic dubbing in the cartoons I used to watch in the early 1990s, and plausibly of Modern Standard Arabic discourse in general: an imagination based on recitation rather than visualization, preferring stirring abstractions to concrete details. After all, concrete details travel poorly in this diglossic context.