Intriguing Characters
June 21st, 2009 | View Comments
We went to Half-Price Books today to sell some books. Which, by the way, I think is a total racket, albeit one I participate in willingly. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to sell books and not spend more than their entire offer while waiting for them to process my pile.
I’d hoped to get a bunch of children’s books in Spanish, figuring that since muchos hispanohablantes viven aquí I had above-average odds of getting something good. I did walk away with a copy of Cinderella (or Cenicienta) and passed on a copy of Harry Potter 2, but the Spanish selection turned out to be pretty disappointing.
But there were some unexpected finds on the Foreign Language shelf. First, a copy of 金魚が逃げた (Hiragana: きんぎょがにげた; Romaji: Kingyo ga Nigeta; English: The Goldfish Escaped).
And then I hit the mother lode:
Is that awesome, or is that TOTALLY AWESOME? From left to right, top to bottom, we have:
| Chinese Title | Chinese Pronunciation | English Title |
|---|---|---|
| 胖嘟嘟小姐 | pang4 du1 du1 xiao2 jie3 | Little Miss Greedy |
| 迷糊小姐 | mi2 hu2 xiao2 jie3 | Little Miss Scatterbrain |
| 明星小姐 | ming2 xing1 xiao2 jie3 | Little Miss Star |
| 雙胞胎小姐 | shuang1 bao1 tai1 xiao2 jie3 | Little Miss Twins |
| 聰明先生 | cong1* ming2 xian1 sheng1 | Mr. Clever |
| 呆呆先生 | dai1 dai1 xian1 sheng1 | Mr. Clumsy |
| 傷腦筋先生 | shang1 nao3 jin1 xian1 sheng1 | Mr. Dizzy |
| 健忘先生 | jian4 wang4 xian1 sheng1 | Mr. Forgetful |
| 匆忙先生 | cong1* mang2 xian1 sheng1 | Mr. Rush |
| 雪人先生 | xue3 ren2 xian1 sheng1 | Mr. Snow |
| 長腿先生 | chang2 tui3 xian1 sheng1 | Mr. Tall |
| 傲慢先生 | ao4 man4 xian1 sheng1 | Mr. Uppity |
Most of the translated titles are very close in meaning, but there are a few head-scratchers in there:
- 胖嘟嘟 doesn’t mean “greedy”, it means “chubby” or just plain “fat”. “Greedy” is 貪吃 (tan1 chi1). The back cover of the Taiwanese Mr. Men books lists Mr. Greedy as 貪吃先生, so I have no idea why they didn’t just go with 貪吃小姐 for Little Miss Greedy.
- 迷糊 is more “dazed and confused” than “scatterbrained”.
- 呆呆 doesn’t mean “clumsy”, it means “slow-witted”.
- And 傷腦筋 most definitely doesn’t mean “dizzy”. The best translation I can come up with is “brainhurt”. Which isn’t even a legitimate English word.
They’ve also done something interesting with Mr. Tall. A direct translation to Chinese would get you 高先生, as 高 (gao1) means “tall”. Except that 高 is also a fairly common Chinese surname, mine and Peter’s surname in fact, and thus 高先生 is a pretty boring name for a whimsical character. So the translators went with 長腿先生, which means “Mr. Long Legs” (長 = long; 腿 = leg).
Even more interesting is the name of the series. What we know in English as “Mr. Men and Little Miss” is 奇先生，妙小姐 in Chinese, literally “Mr. Strange and Miss Wonderful”. 奇妙 (qi2 miao4) is a phrase that means “intriguing” and is part of the common idiom 莫名奇妙 (mo4 ming2 qi2 miao4), which means “to be baffling”.
*Pronunciation note: Despite what it looks like, cong is not actually pronounced with any kind of c sound. Instead, it sounds like tsong. Pinyin sucks that way.
Yvonne posted this on June 21st, 2009 @ 11:28pm in Children's Books, Chinese, Translations | Permalink to "Intriguing Characters"
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American-born Taiwanese girl who married a Japanese guy. And who forgot about six years' of Spanish grammar and most of the vocab.
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