Re: Hello, Valentin! Message #15 Posted by Valentin Albillo on 25 May 2004, 10:46 a.m., in response to message #14 by Vieira, Luiz C. (Brazil)
Hello, Luiz !
Luiz posted:
"Hi, Valentin; long time no... read!"
Yes, it's been indeed. More than two months ...
"I was about to post a message asking about news from you. Good reading your posts again. Hope everything is fine."
Thanks a lot, you're always far too kind. It's just that
I was extremely busy, out of my usual environment. Back to normal (if there's such an state).
"I remember reading one issue of a classic MAD magazine when a storm is shown with falling cats and dogs. We don't use "It's raining cats and dogs" in Brazil, instead we use the equivalent to "It's raining penknives"
Same here. The equivalent Spanish is "Esta lloviendo chuzos de punta" with more or less same literal meaning as your Brazilian version.
"Well, I hope my one-year-and-a-half English (the total time I spent attending English classes) is enough to understand Adam's subtle expressions and language tricks."
Judging from your usual proficiency here, I daresay you're sure to understand and enjoy it to the most. As for the problems inherent in translating "Hitchhiker ..." from English to (say) Portuguese, try these examples:
-
"I am so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis." (Zaphod Beeblebrox in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy")
- "The other Shaltanac's joopleberry shrub is always a more mauvy shade of pinky russet." ("The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy")
- "Oh freddled gruntbuggly thy micturations are to me -- As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee. --
Groop I implore thee my foonting turlingdromes. --
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles, --
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, -- see if I don't!" (Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz's poetry, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy")
- "It's unpleasantly like being drunk." --
"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" --
"You ask a glass of water." (Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent (Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy")
Did you notice the beautiful double-entendre between the first "drunk" and the second "drunk" ? These books are choke-full with such things and some you can translate accurately, some you can translate approximately and many you can't translate at all, just pathetically adapt them and hope the magic is preserved, which alas, it usually doesn't.
Thanks for your kind post and best regards from V.
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