Subtle differences when particulars are "lost in the translation"

[Clay Shannon]

I was re-reading the Spanish/English version of Tom Sawyer (https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Tom-Sawyer-English-Spanish/dp/1535244585) and noticed an interesting translating "error" that was not really that, just a peculiarity of the language.

Where Tom is talking about marbles, he calls two of them "brothers"; in the spanish translation, they are called sisters ("hermanas"); why? because Spanish, like most or at least many languages, assigns a gender to nouns, and marbles (canica) are feminine.

So it might be said that in the conversion from English to Spanish, the marbles lost their balls ... or am I losing my marbles?

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Clay Shannon

Mark Twain Interpreter

Monterey, California

https://www.facebook.com/AdventuresOfMarkTwain/

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