Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Dead woman's dancer

The show: American Dad!
The episode: "Moon Over Isla Island"
What happened: Stan tricks Roger into impersonating the brutal dictator of a small island nation near Cuba. Before the citizens can fulfill their wish to assassinate their dictator, Roger and Stan escape, and a skilled dancer takes over as dictator. A title card at the end tells us that he became the country's most brutal dictator ever, known as "el bailarin de la muerta."
What's wrong with that: My Spanish is rusty, but I can tell there is something is off about that phrase "el bailarin de la muerta." I put that into Babelfish and it gave "the dancer of the dead." Hmm. Did the writers mean to translate "the dancer of Death" to Spanish? Turns out that they were off by one vowel: "el bailarin de la muerte." Put that into Babelfish and you will get "the dancer of the death." Not quite, but a little closer than before.

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