Televisión

Daily life in Spain is full of literal translations ranging from proverbs to music to television. A good example is their naming of ‘KC y su banda Sunshine’ (KC and the Sunshineband). Another one of my favorites is ‘Vigilantes de la playa’ (Baywatch) or the equally pleasing (but less exact) ‘Coche fantastico’ (Knightrider).

Like any other language Spanish has some great expressions (neatly captured in the book From Lost to the River – a fitting birthday present given to me by Carmen). Top on my list is ‘we were with few people and then Grandma had a baby’ (Eramos pocos y parió la abuela). But the list is endless: to be more battered than a gorilla’s chest (estar más zumbao que el pecho de un gorilla), to give firewood to the monkey (dar leña al mono), to cost an egg and part of the other one (costar un huevo y parte del otro) and the fabulous: to be simpler than the mechanism of a bucket (ser más simple que el mechanismo de un cubo).
What they also do is take an English word and – almost literally – run with it. The king example is the Spanish name for a homerun in the game in baseball. First of all they call the game béisbol (neither a base or a ball doesn’t exist in Spanish, more logical would be pelota or balon) which is taking the English sound and adapting it to Spanish spelling. Not to be outdone they have ‘translated’ homerun into – here it comes: Jonrón! (Which is pronounced exactly how is spelled, the Spanish way of saying Homerun!)

The reality is that due to Spanish TV I have learned to understand the language quicker. After a few months without TV we brought a television from Galicia to our new flat so my learning of comprehension can proceed once more. The other day one of my favorite movies was on television ‘Bailando con lobos’ (Dances with wolves). I have always identified myself with Kevin Costner in this movie because when I was young I fancied that when I would be older I would rather look like him. This of course turned out to be incorrect. I – in fact – look like a young Tom Cruise.

Anyway, now I admire Ltn. John Dunbar even more. It has taken me a good twelve months to come to the level of Spanish I have now. Although I am happy with the progress I have made this last year I am nowhere close to the fluency of Mr. Dunbar. The fact that this fine man made the Sioux idiom his own in just one Indian winter is mind-boggling and convinces me even more of his supremacy.

So, Spanish television, what can I say about it. One of the remaining relics from the dictatorship years are the numerous gossip programs shown on national television. Created to keep the public ignorant and quiet you can watch (and more annoyingly listen to) a panel of 5 – all too often also shouting – Spanish verbally tearing up a life of somebody famous, every single hour of the day. To gossip is to live, they say here in Spain. One of the more pleasing aspects of these programs is the lying detector sessions. Although there is a bespectacled man in a white doctor suit analyzing the answers I am not sure about the validity of these tests.

Honesty – or truth for that matter – has little to do with anything anyway. However, the other day I witnessed something I have never seen before. A gypsy man – who is rather famous for reasons I think even he doesn’t understand – managed to negotiate his way through the customary 20 questions without telling the truth one single time. What I could make out of it was that he had lent some money to his ex-wife and there were some severe disagreements. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the gypsy was making things up along the way. It – as always – of course ended in chaos when a family member of the gypsy man walked up onto the stage and threatened the poor ‘doctor’ who was analyzing the answers. You could just see him wonder ‘I must have been sick when we discussed this in acting class’.