Tag / Cantú and Castellanos

by EditorM

¿Qué quiere decir esta palabra “significa”?

I.e. , What does this word “means” mean? Or maybe What does this Spanish word “significa” mean?

In the Spanish version, Baldo’s question in panel 3 ¿Qué significa eso? he speculatively answers for himself with sort of paraphrases of Sergio’s [Papi’s] saying from panel 2, but tending more toward argumentative applications to his current situation. When Sergio answers in panel 4 by just repeating the saying verbatim and asserting that is the meaning, he is bringing down Baldo’s flights of fancy and special pleading by just repeating the idea, for an “it is what it is” effect. All of this makes easy sense.

In the English version, Sergio’s saying in panel 2 is originally presented in Spanish, then repeated in panel 4 in English translation. So It means … in panel 4 amounts to It would be translated as … . Then when we look at Baldo’s What does that mean … in panel 3, is he still only asking for significance and situational applications (which he then supplies, sometimes ironically)? Or is he in any part asking for help in translation? (Since a translation is what he gets.)

by EditorM

I can fix this

Okay, “And now you know why” — why *what*? Why you haven’t stopped by in a while? No, it doesn’t explain Baldo’s own actions to himself.
It could make sense as why he’s been banned from the shop; or more gently, why Sergio has discouraged him from visiting. But neither degree of that has been conveyed in the earlier part of the encounter.

So, *can* we fix this?

by EditorM

Saturday Morning Oys – August 7th, 2021

This is from a book, Otto: A Palindrama by Jon Agee. It was brought to our attention by (and we picked up the image from) an online book review by Gene Ambaum, attached to his Library Comic newsletter.

Pastis is trying so hard in this one, how can we pass up enjoying another look?

Unless it’s disqualified because one of the characters is consciously making the pun joke?

Falco titled this “The Red Hoodie” in his enewsletter. But do we accept that these characters would use the plain form “hood” for either of the meanings required here? Mebbe.

From Andréa, a sort of OY-Awww!

by EditorM

Lying down on the job

Sent by larK, who points out numerous holes in Baldo’s account. “So, he’s not mowing the lawn, but he said he would, yet he claims he doesn’t lie, at least outside of social media: did he state his intention to mow the lawn on social media? Otherwise: huh? And either way, this is funny why? Ha, ha, we all lie on social media?”

We think we’ve pretty much established that Baldo is written in English and translated to produce the Spanish edition. Nonetheless, here is the same day in Spanish, in case it proves helpful to anyone:

by EditorM

Bonus Baldo: A pun before and after translation

Back in last November, in this “OY collection” post, we discussed a Baldo strip and the matching Baldo en Español where an element of the joke doesn’t come thru in the Spanish version, and combined this observation with other instances, as well as “About” tab type info and external sources, to agree that the strip seems usually to have been first written in English, then translated for the Spanish version.

(In that November post, if you feel like scrolling back, there was also a fun digression stemming from a different comic, on a style of word-play puzzle called by some “Dingbats”, a sort of text-layout rebus.)

In March, Arnold Zwicky’s Blog discussed a related example, with the same conclusion, where the English Baldo was about English language spelling and pronunciation (just pointing out that tough, cough, and dough give different sounds to the -ough sequence of letters) and the Baldo en Español just used the Spanish translations of those words, which really don’t resemble each other in any special way, certainly not rhyming. Zwicky also brought up some possibilities on how the Spanish version could have been handled. (And yes, that’s me popping into the comments.)
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Now lookit what just showed up on GoComics!


All the Spanish that you really need to know here is that pecado indeed means sin, and pescado means fish (as food).

In the English version, Tía Carmen’s jest is to turn the saying “Hate the sin but love the sinner” into “… love the dinner”. In Spanish she says “… love the fish [we are eating]” which is basically the same idea, but manages to preserve the word-play element because of the resemblance of pecado and pescado.

by EditorM

Saturday Morning Oys – November 7th, 2020

You can always count on Gargle Seawater for some Oy content!

Here is Baldo (1) using an embattled English expression in its traditional form, not the disputed more-modern form, and (2) making a pun out of it.

For comparison, for those who can make use of it, also providing the Spanish version.  The pun doesn’t seem to have been attempted here.

Full-on pun for *Dingbats*.

The sender says: “It’s been over 40 years since Edith Bunker died.
Has anyone used the word ‘dingbat’ as an insult since then?” Probably not, and it may take a geezer to recall it. The *word* of course remains familiar to font-heads.

Dark side of The Horse so often breaks new frontiers in cartoon-physics! And we usually call that LOL, but here there is wordplay on “airplane mode” that should qualify for an OY.

From Andréa.

Oy!

Take a wild guess at why she’s in the dark and taking a shot.

by CIDU Bill

Y … ¿Cómo se ve la versión española de esta tira?

Y ... Cómo se ve la versión española de esta tira.

  1. The joke is that the kids are charlatans because they’re pretending to know Spanish when they don’t? Or they do but they’re pretending no to?
  2. Or that Carmen is correcting Sergio’s Spanish?
  3. And for that matter, how do they handle the Spanish-language version of comics like this? Write a separate comic with a different gag, or somehow try to make it work?

    Actually, I think I heard somewhere that the Spanish version of the strip is written first and what the rest of us see is the translated version — but I have no idea whether this is true.