So right now, I'm working on notes for the Spanish-subtitled edition of Wonderfalls episode 2, and I was wondering if you could clarify a few things for me:
*There's a line in the opening scene where Jaye's father says "those sons of biscuits", which is a wordplay on "those sons of [female dogs]", but literally says that they're sons of a type of bread (literally, it would translate to calling them "hijos de bizcochos"). Now, I must admit I'm disappointed with the subtitle on this. The whole point is that the phrase is so innocent it's silly, even with the implied REAL meaning, yet the subtitle still rewrites it into a non-joke, as "Son unos bribones", literally "those lazy people", "those rascals" or "those scamps", which though innocent enough, seems to kill the joke, especially since Jaye is supposed to mistake the phrase at first for a comment about her former high school classmates, who were probably nasty or unpleasant people more than they were lazy people, anyway (her father WAS referring to lazy trash collectors who had left the trash cans in the driveway, but again - it kills the joke through eliminating the double-entendre and ambiguity, it seems). Now, for the sake of my notes, I must ask a couple of questions here - first: the phrase that would translate to "those sons of [female dogs]", that does imply the person you're referring to with it is unpleasant, right? Second: is there actually a pun I'm not getting here?
*Another phrase in this scene, from the pink flamingo on her dad's lawn (the show centers on Jaye's seeing inanimate objects that happen to have faces move and talk to her and tell her to do stuff), is "Get off your ass". Now, I have to say, translating most of the phrases the talking objects say to Jaye has GOT to be a challenge, since all of them are delibrately ambiguous (since it's supposed to be a mystery in each episode, what the phrase or phrases actually mean); this phrase could literally mean "stop sitting down" (which she technically does, since she does get up out of her seat to close the car window), or "start doing something". The translation here in the subtitles was "Ponte en movimiento." Am I right in thinking this seems to translate to "Put it in motion"? If so, the Spanish translation is actually pretty funny and oddly appropriate, considering the next thing she does is try to close the window so she can't hear it - and accidentally release the parking brake, literally putting the car in motion and running over her dad! I just want to know if I'm interpreting this properly.
*There's a scene later where Mahondra is commenting on the annoying person that followed Jaye into the bar, and what she says in the original English is "You stepped in something, and dragged it all the way in here for us to smell."; what she says in the Spanish subtitles is "Pisaste algo que apesta y lo trajiste pegado, porque huele feo." - am I wrong, or does this actually translate to something more like "You stepped in something that (stinks / infects with Plague / corrupts) and carried [it] stuck [to your shoe], because [it] smells ugly."? If so... also actually even funnier in Spanish, as the person in question is a cute, squeaky, annoyingly cheerful character who is actually the kind of cruel person most people disliked the most in high school (they said something in the first episode, I think, about how she had once used another girl's towel from the locker room to wipe her... ah... rear end). Lemme know if I'm on track, please?
*There's a line when Jaye answers this guy's phone and when the other woman says she's his wife, she says "his cheating wife, the one who broke his heart?". In the subtitles, this is translated to "¿La infiel que le partió el alma?" Doesn't the Spanish version of the line actually translate back to "The unfaithful woman that broke his soul"? Are "heart" and "soul" really interchangeable in this context?
Any help you can give me is much appreciated!
-Runa27