¡Oye Chamaco!

I'm always fascinated by the question of how translators manage translating a joke or situation that involves a reference to the target translation language. For example, on the Simpsons, in Spanish translations, Bumblebee Man speaks gibberish instead of Spanish (I'm told). And on an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which Xander dreams people are telling him important information in French, I listened to the French translation, and it seemed to me the French was swapped for Russian.

So, today's FoxTrot (which I receive in email, in both English and Spanish, because I'm a GEEK that way):

Where the English indicates that Peter thinks he's in the Land of Giant Burritos by having him speak Spanish, the Spanish needs to get more clever to create the same impression, so it adds the word "chamaco" ("kid"), which appears to be specifically a Mexican Spanish word. So it's sort of the equivalent of indicating a visit to the Land of Haggis with "Where am I, laddie?"

Mind you, Justin tells me that burritos were actually invented in San Francisco, but humor doesn't have to be accurate to be funny.

So, a question to any native Spanish speakers reading this, is the Spanish version funny? Is my explanation of the joke correct? Does it work as well as the English version?

Labels: neat stuff

posted by Tony at 5:24 PM