Category: spanish

subtitles and subtexts

There’s been plenty of talk about the latest Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law. Downey himself caused some of the controversy with his comments on The Letterman Show in December. (Currently on YouTube: part 1 and part 2.)

The discussion (half way through part 2) touched on the relationship between Holmes and Watson. After a brief bantering exchange, Downey says: “Why don’t we observe the clip and let the audience decide if he just happens to be a very butch homosexual. Which there are many. And I’m proud to know certain of them.”
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translation fail

I’m translating a piece on Las Fallas – Valencia’s wonderful firework fiestas – and, as usual, I started off running the text through the Google translator to see if it would save me time.

Sadly, Google opts for an altogether different meaning for falla. This means that the phrase:

En la oficina de turismo podrás encontrar información sobre las diferentes rutas para contemplar las fallas más espectaculares.

becomes:

In the tourist office you can find information about different routes to see the most spectacular failures.

Perhaps human translators will be needed for a while yet.

poet and pretender

Last week, someone sent me a text that included this translated quotation from Pessoa:

El poeta es un fingidor.
Finge tan completamente
Que hasta finge que es dolor
El dolor que de veras siente.

No attribution was given to the translator, but it seems to be faithful enough to the original Portuguese that perhaps that isn’t necessary:

O poeta é um fingidor.
Finge tão completamente
Que chega a fingir que é dor
A dor que deveras sente.

Now, though, I’m wondering how on earth I’d say that in English.
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military vices

We were talking about repairing a wooden trunk that we could use as a side table if it didn’t keep falling apart when it’s moved. I reckoned a dab of cola blanca around the dowels would do the trick when we put it back together again.

At which point my partner announced, “Creo que hay un sargento entre las herramientas en el invernadero.”

carpenter's bench vice & other tools
The tools are in the greenhouse

OK. We’ll gloss over the fact that we keep tools in the greenhouse – although this explains the slightly greenish tint to the photo – and focus on the “sargento”.

What was a sergeant doing with the tools, and what was his relevance to the simple repair we were about to undertake?
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la matanza

Today I came across the Asociación Cultural “Tradición Arenense” , and discovered that at least one of the “cultural traditions” of the town of Arenas de San Pedro sounds quite bloody.

This weekend, according to a poster I saw in a bar window, they are celebrating “la matanza, dios mediante, en la plaza de las víctimas.” They could hardly have chosen a better venue, could they?

Presumably dios mediante doesn’t mean that God will be officiating at the upcoming slaughter; it must be the local equivalent of d.v. – deo volente – God willing. Personally, I’d always hoped the Spanish phrase might be con dios al volante – “with God at the steering wheel.”