Shut up, puta; or, what is Tarantula on about?

[buggery]

Readers of the recent run of Nightwing may have noticed that the current Tarantula, Catalina Flores, is Latina. She even speaks Spanish sometimes.

Devin Grayson, in a nod to America's increasingly bilingual (English/Spanish) culture, scripts these bits in Spanish, without providing a translation. Now, I reread Watership Down fairly compulsively between the ages of ten and thirteen, as a result of which (among other things) I tend to look on snippets of foreign language included in something I'm reading as a challenge -- either to make use of existing language skills in translating, or to learn something new in discovering what the word or phrase means.

Not everyone takes this view, and I get lazy with its application myself. But after checking the several online translation tools (well, Google's and Alta Vista's) and finding their translations woefully unhelpful, decided to explain a couple of colloquialisms for the benefit of my fellow readers who may know even less Spanish than I do.


querido -- darling
mi amor -- my love
callado -- cheer up


Disclaimer: Hablo Español un poquito solamente, y no comprendo mucho. Pero esto es fácil.

Comments

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Tragically, I know endearments like querida and mi amor, and "sim" for yes, and a couple of other things that escape me right now from my voracious reading of old Mills and Boons. There was a vogue for Spanish and Portugese heroes. They were always ragingly macho and sexist. With thick mats of chest hair and Rolexes.