The Art of Translating: The Case of Dr. Seuss

After long and repetitive sessions trying to do on-the-spot translation of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, I was relieved to receive the Spanish version for Christmas.  How do you translate a "seven-hump Wump"?  How can you make it sound as cute to box in yellow socks?  These questions were answered by whatever professional translators take on the Dr. Seuss books, which Hudson is now much more enthralled with than when I stumbled and guessed my way through them before.  (I would read the English book, but in Spanish as best I could because I pretty much refuse to read to him in English.)  To play around and have fun in a foreign language is perhaps the highest level of bilingual comfort -- they say telling jokes in a second language is one of the top skills... well, I don't tell many jokes in any language, so I feel  a little exempt.

So, now we have Huevos verdes con jamón and Un pez, dos peces, pez rojo, pez azul in our collection and they are a hit.  They are both published by Lectorum, which has everything, and while some quality bookstores and toy stores do certainly carry the Spanish Dr. Seuss, I also recommend the Continental Book Company online for more easy Spanish searching. 

I have done some translating both in classes and on my own, of poetry, and it is hard.  I have a great respect for those whose task it is to find the way to make ridiculous words in Spanish match the English craziness of a Yink who drinks pink ink.  It is also a great way to get more intimate with Spanish and to see what noises an animal or machine might make, to see what names might make sense if they have to rhyme with something in particular.  I love it.  It's all fun, it's all brain-bending, and if Dr. Seuss is pretty much the only thing I'm reading these days, it's okay.