Another weird and wonderful way to stretch your Spanish a bit is to try to translate newspaper headlines.
And I don't mean the dead boring ones like " International Monetary Fund to charge Greece 18% interest on Bailout loans."
No... I mean the tabloid ones... short, sharp, blunt, cheeky, daft, alliterative, punning!
There are tabloid headlines to suit all ability ranges...although they can require a bit of thought and creativity as well.
In the interests of in-depth research, I went out on Monday and shelled out a whopping 30p on a copy of the Sun... I told the Librarian what I had done and she said that she understood, but it shouldn't happen again.
So here is selection of what Monday's Sun had to offer... .. in a handy easy-to-difficult-to-near-impossible format
[a] TYPE 1... short and sweet... fairly straightforward
... May Hotting Up
...Lotta Lolly
...Singer Turns Up In Coffin
...Tack Attack
...Doom Lens
...Off With Ex
...You're Fired!
... Rich Richer
... Drunk Driver, 9
... Ultimate Betrayal
[b] TYPE 2.... a bit of thought needed here...
...Plane Stupid ( about the government scrapping Spy Planes )
...Hotel for Nudes
...Dannii was Axed ( about Dannii Minogue getting kicked off X Factor)
...Kelly Rowland Lined Up ( about her potential replacement)
...Payback Time ( about getting banks to pay back some of what WE are owed!)
...Lotta Lolly ( This is actually about expensive gold-encrusted ice lollies)
...Hard-Up Fergie ( about Sarah Ferguson being poor)
...Rise of the Yobettes ( drunken young ladies in town centres)
...Betterflies ( about last year's good weather boosting butterfly numbers)
...Look Fabulass just like Pippa ( Pippa's amazing rear)
...United Front ( Fergie under attack from all sides)
[c] TYPE 3... Not easy... hard to get the right " feel" in another language...
...We Blue off Steam ( about the boy-band Blue on Eurovision)
...We're Buck ( about Buck's Fizz on Eurovision)
...Loony Toon ( about Newcastle player Nile Ranger with a gun in an advert)
... It Moss Be The Queen ( about Kate Moss arriving in a helicopter)
...James N'Pat in big Spat ( James Corden + Patrick Stewart argument)
... Freeze a jolly good Fellow ( People being statues in City Centres)
... It's the Stuff that Screams are made of... ( Man City Cup Win...) which leads us on to..
...Bulls are totally out-foxed ( Bradford Bulls Rugby League team that is)
[d] TYPE 4... Football Headlines... in a world of their own, almost untranslateable !
... Van-tastic ( Van der Vaart scores to beat Liverpool)
... Bent Over ( Darren Bent scores 2 to beat Arsenal)
...Zend of the road ( Bolo Zenden quite Sunderland)
...Hope and Gory ( Hope for Wigan, looks nasty for Birmingham)
...They're Hairoes ( Paul Scharner of West Ham dyes hair blue for finall home game)
...Fans victim of some Vowel play ( PNECRISIS appeared on Countdown... Preston North End)
...Poshing his Luck ( Peterborough ( Posh) still in with a chance)
...Mission in Action ( Fergie still wants more goals)
...Kid Owen is just Boot-iful ( Owen Farrell boots Saracens into R U play-offs)
...Oh Walter Way to Go ( Walter Smith, Rangers Manager, finally leaves )
...Gunner be hard now for Arsene ( Arsene Wenger with tricky final matches)
There's a lot of thinking and head-scratching there for a measly 30p.
I always used to wonder what they meant when "they" said that Horace ( Latin Poet) was " untranslateable". Surely, I thought to myself, languages are just codes, and we can decode them.
Now I am older and wiser I realise that if languages ARE a code, then they are subtle, flexible, interactive and constantly changing codes.
A few thoughts about some of those headlines..
* How DO you cnvey the flavour of that 'n in James N'Pat ?
* The Plane/Plain pun...can you do a similar thing in Spanish? Might you have to change the adjective to another one where the trick can work?
* The Blue/Blew pun... you can't change Blue because that's their name.. so you would probably have to find a similar-sounding spanish verb and make a pun with that.but I can't find anything suitable.... though in German you might do something with blasen... to blow ?
* Freeze/For he's ... the pun doesn't seem to work at all in Spanish... you would probably have ot search around for another popular line that you could pun with.
*Can you find a Sapnish version of the Fabul-ass pun, can you do it with a different but similar-meaning word? What is the Spanish -OUS ending?
* What exactly IS the Spanish for " out-foxed"?
These are just a few of the myriad questions translators have to deal with when changing stuff like this from one language to another, and trying to get the right "feel" to the translation as well.
The thing is, while you are looking up all the various adjectives, verbs, nouns etc plus all the alternatives you might use, you are using the dictionary like mad and learning and using new words in a fun way.Result!
I look forward to getting some feedback on possible translations for some of thse headlines.
In the meantime, here's Niños Mutantes with Sapos y Culebras ... the video is just a still but I will try to find a more interesting one...
and here's the words...
Lyrics to Sapos Y Culebras :
Llega el tiempo de cambiar,
llega silencioso y por detrás,
y no pensabas que te iba a tocar.
Llega el tiempo de pensar
que el futuro es un buen lugar.
Y es que no siempre puede durar
la sensación de empezar.
Perros, gatos, peces, cabras,
ratas, sapos y culebras,
todos tus amigos de verdad.
Habla bien desde la grada
y te esperan en tu casa,
quieren verte y escucharte.
Prometen que te acompañaran
hasta el final.
Perros, gatos, peces, cabras,
ratas, sapos y culebras,
todos tus amigos de verdad.
Habla bien desde la grada
y te esperan en tu casa,
quieren verte y escucharte.
[ These are Sapos Y Culebras Lyrics on http://www.lyricsmania.com/ ]
Keep those pesky translations coming!
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