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A three line poemThis is the place for questions about conjugations, verb tenses, adverbs, adjectives, word order, syntax and other grammar questions for English or Spanish. |
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#1
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A three line poem
Hi all, I am a Dutchman with some knowledge of Spanish. I came across a tweet / poem by Elvira Sastre and I have a grammatical question about it.
Bésame, me dijo. Yo le entendí: vérsame. Y ahí empezó el (p)r(o)bl(ema). My translation would be: Kiss me, s/he said to me. I heard: put me into verse. That’s where the p(r)o(bl)em started. (The wordplay is lost in my translation.) I am not quite sure about the word le in Yo le entendí. Does it mean it, referring to Bésame? Or does it mean I understood him/her saying... Thank you for any answers. |
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#2
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"Le" is an indirect object pronoun, it refers to "him".
The translation is alright. It's normally impossible to keep wordplays in any translation, but oddly, you can keep the second part of the fun that isolates "poem" in the word "problem": "(p)r(o)bl(em)"
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#3
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Thank you. Here is the quotation again, now with the parentheses in the right places:
Bésame, me dijo. Yo le entendí: vérsame. Y ahí empezó el p(r)o(bl)ema. |
#4
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Well, the two words ("poema"/"problema")are still emphasized, so the good place of the parentheses is only for the sake of being faithful to the original version, and the wordplay works in English as well. It's a shame there is no way to keep "kiss" and "verse" work together too.
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♪ ♫ ♪ Ain't it wonderful to be alive when the Rock'n'Roll plays... ♪ ♫ ♪ |
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