I'm relatively new to this community so I apologise if this subject has already been brought up at some point :) I'm from Estonia, speak Estonian, English, German (and poor Russian + a little Spanish). And the thing with transcribing animal sounds in different languages has bothered me for a while now. So I was wondering whether there is a theory about it...
As we know, in English dogs bark woof! woof!, in Russian it's gaf! gaf! in Estonian auh! auh! So my questions are: how do dog's bark in your language? Is it really that different languages 'hear' the sound that differently or is it just a matter of transcribing sounds in different languages?
Looking forward to everyone's thoughts!
EDIT: Thanks for all the replies! Got some nice links to webpages where you can listen and read the particular sounds animals make in different languages. Reading your replies and thinking of this I have come to the conclusion that each language probably transcribes animal sounds based on what is generally typical for this language. How it sounds and is pronounced, and also probably with part of your mouth is used to create sounds...