Hey Babu Riba???

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The original title in SerboCroatian is Bal na vodi, but the translation as Dance on water is wrong. Bal na vodi is the SerboCroatian translation of famous Esther Williams movie shot in Havana, Cuba. Hey Baburiba is the local way of singing a song when you do not know the lyrics so you hum "Hey! Babu Riba, Hey! Babu Riba". Actually, the words have no meaning at all.

Very bad name for a film they're trying to sell in the USA. Should have renamed it for America. "Hey Babu Riba" reads like Chinese to 99.9% of Americans.

This title is, actually, some sort of a word-play, since it has two meanings.

It is some sort of (common in Serbia) phonetic transcription of Lionel Hampton's song "Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop" which is heard in the movie. (Though, I thing that in the movie they're playing the Louis Prima's version.)

Also, the words "Babu" and "Riba" have meanings in Serbian ("granny" and "fish").

However, the whole title ("Hey, Granny Fish") is a nonsense. So it is merely an illustration of the naive way post-WWII ex-YU youth was trying to grasp those very few Western songs and movies that managed to reach them through the communist barriers.

There is also similarly naive (and dubbed with Serbian words) transcription of "Jambalaya" in the movie.