MPSPRNTS

In Winny de Puh ( and El Rincón de Puh) there is a standing joke about the terrible spelling of Owl (Wol) and Christopher Robin... and it's interesting to look at the way it is done in the English version and the spanish version.

When Pooh goes round to Owl's house, he finds two messages.... in English they read..


PLES RING IF AN RNSER IS REQIRD

and PLEZ CNOKE IF AN RNSR IS NOT REQID

and even when I was 10 or so I loved the double joke in these messages.

Anyway, here's how the Winny de Puh translator Izabel Gortazar deals with them...

LLAMR ENSACO DURJENZIA

and NO YAMAR ENKSO DE HURGENSIA

and just to be a smart-arse, in Latin the translator, Alexander Lenard, does this..

CUESO SONA AES SI RSPONSM VIS


and CUESO PULSA SI RSPONSM NON VIS

and then a few lines further on, we find that Christoper Robin wrote these signs because Owl was quite a good speller, but often got confused beteween words like

MEASLES and BUTTERED TOAST

in the Spanish these come out as HIPECACUANA and HUEVOSFRITOS

Of course, he spells his own name WOL ... in the Spanish Owl is called BUHO, and he spells it VUO .

In El Rincón de Puh, Christopher Robin leaves a mysterious note oh his front door, which Milne writes as....

GON OUT
BACKSON
BISY
BACKSON

In Spanish this turns into...

ESA LIDO
BULBOPROTO
OQPADO
BULBOPROTO

Wol/Owl then gets the uneasy feeling that a Backson is involved, and suggests it could be the Spotted or Herbaceous Backson. This comes out in Spanish as a BULBOPROTO MOTEADO O HERBACIO which is pretty close.

and of course we all know what he is doing, he has started school....so when the signs are rewritten at the end of the chapter, they are written correctly. No fun there at all.

Now.... altering these words so that they are still more or less readable, and yet making them funny at the same time, is very language-specific and hard to "translate" from one language to another, and obviously is not the srot of thing you are going to find in a dictionary, or a book of idioms, or slang.... it's really a "native-speaker" job.

The sad thing is, I've just about finished the books, and it is a very sad ending as well.

To cheer us all up, here's Santi Balmas and Los Seis Dias with the very cheerful Te Odio..



Thanks to adictivos.com for these lyrics..

LOS SEIS DIAS - Te Odio

Te odio por la nota que dejaste al despertar
huyendo
te odio por los dias que has estado sin estar
dentro de mi
Te odio
Por dejarme a medias antes de llegar al extasis
Te odio
Por tu boca que carece de verdad
Y sigue asi
Te odio
Como nadie en este mundo te odiara
Te odio
Como no se puede odiar a nadie mas
Te odio
Por que siempre sigues
siempre sigues
siempre sigues, ahí

te odio
tanto que podria hacerte resucitar del miedo
olvidaste llevar el cuaderno en el que solias preguntar
cuantos dias quedaban para vernos
tengo el corazon a punto de estallar

te odio
como nadie en este mundo te odiara
te odio
como no se puede odiar a nadie mas
te odio (x 6).