‘I love it when a plan comes together!’

The famous catch phrase used by Col. John ‘Hannibal’ Smith in The A Team was wisely translated into Spanish by ‘¡Me encanta que los planes salgan bien!’… Everyone my age remembers that. The field of translation is very complex and decisions have to be made bearing in mind a lot of elements. Fairly often, when a TV series or film is translated / dubbed some ‘details’ need to be adapted to the new language and/or culture. A proper name may have inappropriate connotations in the target culture, for example. (There are some very good examples to illustrate my point but … I don’t recall any at the moment

)

In the case of The A Team, the translators into Spanish did some changes to adapt to the Spanish viewers:

Sgt. ‘B.A.’ Barracus (‘B.A.‘ standing for ‘Bad Attitude’, as explained in The Pilot) changed to M.A. Barracus (‘M.A.’ standing for ‘Very Aggressive’ in Spanish Muy Agresivo).

Capt. H.M. Murdock was not translated but the initials stand for ‘Howling Mad’ in English and sometimes the group refer to him as Loco Aullador in Spanish – a very awkward nickname…

Finally, Lt. Templeton ‘Faceman’ Peck is called Fénix in the Spanish version.

It is funny how one thing leads you to another. This topic came to my mind yesterday as I was watching the first episode of The IT Crowd (I highly recommend watching it … lots of laugh and very geeky. Wonderful shot with Jen’s job interview at the beginning!!!). On the first episode Denholm claimed that the names of the characters in his admired A Team were Bodie, Doyle, Tiger and the Jewellery Man  — he was partly confusing the A Team with The Professionals and partly just making up the names …

Going back to The IT Crowd, everything I have seen so far is a blast – the characters, the set, the dialogues … I have only seen the first three chapters, though. I hope it doesn’t jump the shark. I hear that NBC is preparing an American version of the series taking Moss from the original cast overseas. I hope the series lasts for a loooooong time and that we can eventually enjoy it here in Spain with a good translation/dubbing.

Thanks to Morgan for coming over yesterday and sharing The IT Crowd with me. You’re my favourite brother! 😉

ROTFL

Hi again. I “skipped blog” yesterday and I apologize for having broken that first rule I wrote on my first post: writing on the blog every single day…. :´(

I have to say that it won’t be the last time I do it, since I’m going on holiday next Monday for a week and I’m almost sure that I won’t have the chance to write any new posts. I may have the time, however, to quickly log in to answer to any comments you may have. . but I can’t promise.

Going back to my “letting you down” for a day, I confess that I had planned to write about the results with the Netstumbler, but since I hadn’t “done my homework” (i.e. installing and trying out the programme, so that I could tell you about it) I put off my posting on and on…

So here I am, writing again but still with no news about the app because I (again!) haven’t tried it out.

This post is about something I found out yesterday and which called my attention as a teacher of English/ linguist/ translator. The name of the post doesn’t ring a bell? It must be quite obvious for English speaker users of blogs, chats, etc. but it may not be quite as clear for non-native speakers of English, especially if they haven’t used the so-called “new technologies” for communicating with others in English.

The abreviations and acronyms are pervasive in the ever increasing phenomena of text messaging (SMS), instant messaging (MSN Messenger…), chat rooms (IRC…), and some of them are coming into other more traditional types of communication: advertising, teen magazines,…

Apart from abreviations and acronyms, there is a newly created linguistic term to name “words” like LOL (laughing out loud or lots of laughs) or IMHO (in my humble opinion). They are called initialisms and they are everywhere. Another example is the title of the post, and if you search for ‘LOL’ in Wikipedia, you’ll find out more. 

I hope you found this as interesting as I did.

Blog to you soon.