The green-eyed man
This is not a question, really. Just an observation from a movie I watched a long time ago. Suddenly I feel like sharing it.
The movie is called Bolt. It's one of those Pixar CGI animated cartoon Disney films. In it there's a villain called "The Green-Eyed Man." That's the only way he is referred to in the English version. The never call him Bob or anything like that.
I was fully expecting for that to get translated something like: El hombre con el ojo verde or el hombre del ojo verde or something like that. But, whenever I listened to the Spanish track, while I could plainly hear "ojo verde," I had difficulty figuring out the first part. I think sometimes I could make out "del ojo verde," but the phrase that was being used for "the man" was always said so quick I could never quite catch it. In fact, it may well have taken a year or more before one day I finally heard it.
They were calling him: "El del ojo verde."
Now I don't know if that's "él" or "el." I tend to think it is el (the article), in which case it translates literally as "the (one) of the green eye." I was so proud to hear it after it had eluded me for so long.
Of course, mind you, they have to lip-sync, too and I imagine it is much easier to match "el del ojo verde" to "the green-eyed man" than it would be to match "el hombre con el ojo verde" to it.
So, I do have a question. Which way is most natural: "el del ojo verde" or "el hombre del ojo verde"? Or, are both the same?
1 Answer
The articles in Spanish can be used alone when we would say "the one..." in English. I think it could translate as "the one (man) of (with) the green eye, ¨ and it´s very natural to phrase it this way in Spanish. (It would be Él.)
As another example, you can say ¨los de Agentina.¨ The ones or the people from Argentina.¨
