Some quick translation help.
As a festive exercise, I'm translating some passages out of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. As I expected, however, some of the cleverness is getting lost in my clunky Spanish. Here's two things that I just can't seem to get a hold on so far: a complex sentence and a very elusive idiom.
"Everybody shut up and settled down right away, for fear of missing something awful that the Herdmans might do."
I translated this as "Todos se callaron y se calmaron en seguida, por miedo a merderse algo horrible que los Herdmans podrían hacer." The sentence is so complex, though, that I'm afraid I've done quite the patchwork job, especially with the reflexive verbs and the phrase "for fear of missing." Does it sound right?
Also, a little later the horrible Herdmans are described as "sliding into the room like a bunch of outlaws about to shoot up a saloon." I can't find even a rough equivalent for the phrase "shoot up" other than just plain "shoot," which doesn't have the same meaning.
Thanks, guys!
6 Answers
That's difficult, because the main idea (I just saw this play again this year) is not only that the Herdmans were looking for a fight, but that they were as uncouth and uncivilized as outlaws from the Old West -- hicks, basically. (The girls smoke cigars in the church bathroom, among other things, causing one of the funnier scenes in the play later on.)
James Santiago said:
LadyDi said:
You did pretty good. I would say, "Todos se callaron y se calmaron en seguida por miedo a perderse algo horrible que pudieran hacer los Herdmans." As for "shooting", I would just use the verb "disparar".
Don't forget that family names don't take the plural in Spanish, so it would be los Herdman.
"sliding into the room like a bunch of outlaws about to shoot up a saloon."
A professional translator would probably rewrite this sentence, because it is loaded with American cultural baggage that doesn't translate well into Spanish. I think the idea here is that the Herdmans looked as if they were spoiling for a fight, which would be something like "andaron en el cuarto buscando pelea." That does indeed lose a lot of the original flavor, though, so maybe someone can improve on it.
>
Give us your translation, and we can comment on it. You have the full context, so you have a better idea what the author was trying to convey here. The idea is to convey that same idea, but not necessarily with the same verbal images.
James Santiago said:
LadyDi said:
You did pretty good. I would say, "Todos se callaron y se calmaron en seguida por miedo a perderse algo horrible que pudieran hacer los Herdmans." As for "shooting", I would just use the verb "disparar".
Don't forget that family names don't take the plural in Spanish, so it would be los Herdman.
"sliding into the room like a bunch of outlaws about to shoot up a saloon."
A professional translator would probably rewrite this sentence, because it is loaded with American cultural baggage that doesn't translate well into Spanish. I think the idea here is that the Herdmans looked as if they were spoiling for a fight, which would be something like "andaron en el cuarto buscando pelea." That does indeed lose a lot of the original flavor, though, so maybe someone can improve on it.
Did not know that about the surname thing! And yeah, I'm pretty close to rewriting the sentence. Do you think it would work if I just said, "about to start a bar brawl"? I figure that keeps the imagery and would be fairly cross-culture...'
LadyDi said:
You did pretty good. I would say, "Todos se callaron y se calmaron en seguida por miedo a perderse algo horrible que pudieran hacer los Herdmans." As for "shooting", I would just use the verb "disparar".
Don't forget that family names don't take the plural in Spanish, so it would be los Herdman.
"sliding into the room like a bunch of outlaws about to shoot up a saloon."
A professional translator would probably rewrite this sentence, because it is loaded with American cultural baggage that doesn't translate well into Spanish. I think the idea here is that the Herdmans looked as if they were spoiling for a fight, which would be something like "andaron en el cuarto buscando pelea." That does indeed lose a lot of the original flavor, though, so maybe someone can improve on it.
O_o nothing is horrible on christmas..
You did pretty good. I would say, "Todos se callaron y se calmaron en seguida por miedo a perderse algo horrible que pudieran hacer los Herdmans." As for "shooting", I would just use the verb "disparar".
