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The Little Prince By Antoine De Saint-Exupéry Is Now Available In Chabacano!

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 ...
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Translating The Little Prince: Looking Out For Legitimate New Chabacano Words

One the things that I had to grapple with when translating The Little Prince was Chabacano spelling. While there was a general rule for spelling, it was very hard to interpret. At that time, the city government had not yet published their Chabacano dictionary which was essentially an interpretation of the Chabacano orthography rule that they came out with. 

One of the things that were vague was when to consider something a totally different word and not simply a different way to pronounce a certain Chabacano word.

Let's take a few words as an example.

Alcansa 
Encansa

Tambien
Tamen

Ustedes
Ostedes

Iyo
Yo

Etu
Tu

Pregunta
Prigunta

The general rule that I followed for the translation was when only one letter was missing, added, or changed (from E to I and from O to U or vice versa), I considered it as simply a different way to pronounce the same word. For example, prigunta and ostedes are definitely a different way of pronouncing pregunta and ustedes respectively, therefore only the words pregunta and ustedes can be found in the translation to conform with the Chabacano Orthography rule prescribed the city government of Zamboanga. The same goes for iyo and etu. These do not appear in the translation because I felt like they were simply one and the same as yo and tu. If you think about it, you will always pronounce yo and tu with an ee or an e at the beginning but depending on whether you speak fast or slow or the emotions you are feeling, it may be very subtle or hardly pronounced. 

While some people would consider tamen as a seperate word from tambien, I felt like it was simply a matter of a difference in pronunciation. I have heard a lady from Basilan pronounce this word as tamien and I have heard an old guy who speaks Philippine Spanish pronounce it as tamben when he speaks rapidly so I thought that we can definitely spell tamen as tambien even though we hardly pronounce it that way in casual conversations.

While encansa never appeared in the book, I would have treated it as an entirely new word (a synonym of alcansa) because I felt like there was no way encansa could have evolved from alcansa. I just didn't think that the letter L could be misheard or mispronounced as the letter N.

To read my unpublished translator notes, please visit https://rebrand.ly/translatorsnotes.

 Relevant Links:

A Reading by the Translator from El Diutay Principe: https://rebrand.ly/translatorreading

El Diutay Principe Book Excerpt: https://rebrand.ly/edppdf

Frequently Asked Questions About The Translation: https://rebrand.ly/edpfaq

Launch video: https://rebrand.ly/launchvid

More photos of the book: https://rebrand.ly/edpphotogallery

Media Kit: https://rebrand.ly/edpmediakit

Visit El Diutay Principe on Facebook at www.facebook.com/eldiutayprincipe


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