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buggeryReaders 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.
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.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-21 04:01 am (UTC)But I much prefer foreign language bits to short, and the bracket solution if the dialog is longer. For example in a recent Wolverine issue I didn't get all of the Spanish dialog with my pitiful knowledge from one year of Spanish, without looking a few things up. And granted, the conversation wasn't that important, but I dislike when I don't know what I'm reading. Though at least Spanish seems to get less mutilated by writers than German and French, possibly because more people speak it in the US (or I could just miss the mistakes, knowing less of it), but it throws me out of the story every time when writers include like two German words or something, and manage to make a total mess.