el blanco
So in addition to reading Calvin y Hobbes with the assistance of babelfish, I'm also starting to watch DVDs with Spanish subtitles -- just to see what I can pick up.This sentence caught my eye:
¡Podríamos ser el blanco de una broma memorable!
The line in English was something like, "We could be the butt of a profound joke!"
What got my attention, of course, was that "butt of the joke" is translated as blanco de una broma.
Blanco -- my old nickname back in the otherwise all-Puerto Rican Troop 520 in Boy Scouts.
I thought they were calling me "white guy" ... but were they actually calling me "butt"? Was I the butt of a joke told only in Spanish? Twenty years later, and I'm only learning this now. Maybe the shoe fit.
(According to babelfish, el blanco means "the target" ... which isn't much better.)
2 Comments:
This reminds me of an old Gary Larson comic where he draws a picture of the Lone Ranger reading a book of Indian translations. And he basically figured out that his nickname (whatever it was) was not a good thing. Also, I'm fairly certain Blanco means white -- I've taken quite a bit of Spanish (4 years in highschool and another couple in college) and that is what it has always meant. Course, maybe you are a big butt.
Dear Blanco,
¡Podríamos ser el blanco de una broma memorable!
Means:
We could be the target of a mermorable joke!
The word "blanco" means "white" and "target".
Translating humor is a complex exercise; one should know the culture of both languages to be able to come up with something that is funny in both languages and still keep the flow of the theme or the story.
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