While Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) written by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry in 1943 now has over 300 translations in different languages worldwide and is now considered the world’s most translated book (not counting religious works), there have been surprisingly only two translations of his book in the Philippines (Filipino and Bicol). El Diutay Principe is only the third edition featuring a Philippine language. The Little Prince is a classic French novella about a pilot who gets stranded in the desert after a plane crash and encounters a little fellow who asks him to draw a sheep for him. Through the course of their meeting, the pilot rediscovers the true meaning of life and what people should value the most. When I came across the book in 2013, I found that I could relate very well to the negative image given to “growing up” in the book. When the idea to translate the book into my mother tongue was presented to me, I didn’t think twice. I thought, ‘a lot of people my ...
Growing up, I've always known that the Chabacano word for 'to faint' is desma . However, if you check Chabacano dictionaries, you will not find this word. The word that is listed in Chabacano dictionaries is desmaya . This comes from the Spanish desmayarse . When I asked other people in their 50s, they all agreed that desma is the word for fainting and not desmaya . I figured that there are only a very few number of Chabacano speakers who still say desmaya and they must be in their 80s already or even dead. Here are some sentences using the Chabacano word desma . Chabacano: Saca agua, ya desma si mama! English: Get some water, mom fainted! Chabacano: Almorza anay tu, baka desma tu de hambre. English: Have some breakfast first, you might faint from hunger. Here are are some posts in social media that I found using the word desma. Malas bos, nuay yo desma.. Nuay yo kosa ya intende kunila yan nosebleed yo byen kere yo desma byen kere gat yo desma kunikaw...