spanish – Page 44 – don't confuse the narrator

from poem to picture book

Any author will tell you that the process which results in a book reaching the bookshop shelves is long and, at times, tortuous.

My own experience makes it five and a half years from the original poem being written to its appearance this month as Bubbles, a bilingual children’s picture book, now available from Topka.

I’ve been thinking again about translating poetry, partly because it’s a pet subject of mine, and partly because I’m hoping to run a course on the subject next year and have been preparing the course spec.

One of the recurring questions is “when does a translation cease to be a translation and become a derivative work?”.
Continue reading “on translating poetry”

de tiendas II

It’s not just the bread and cake shops that confuse me in Spain. There’s a-whole-nother area of shop difficulties associated with chemist shops and drug stores.

In the UK we have chemists. Inside a chemist shop you’ll find the pharmacy counter where you can buy your medicines – or, hopefully, in the near future get your prescription made up free of charge. You’ll also usually find a photographic department, perhaps an optician, even, maybe, a wine-making area. Continue reading “de tiendas II”

language bombs

On the subject of shops, I talked about the bombonería – the chocolate shop – and the fact that our local bar is called the Bombonera although it’s neither chocolate box pretty, nor does it sell anything sweet, focusing rather, as do most normal Spanish bars, on fried food such as calamares and pieces of pig.

The whole bomb… lexical area is, perhaps unsurprisingly, one which deserves due respect. Our butane gas is delivered in big orange bottles called bombonas. (Remember that bombón is a chocolate or similar sweet.) Continue reading “language bombs”