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 ...
I watched a couple of vlogs wherein a foreigner asked someone who spoke Chabacano what 'hello' was in their language. Without missing a beat, they replied hola . When I was growing up, I remember hearing hola, Zamboanga being popularized during the annual Zamboanga Hermosa festivals. The street dance performers during these festivals would shout hola, Zamboanga repeatedly while dancing. I'm not sure if all of them (or any of them) knew what hola meant. The thing about the greeting 'hello' is that it is a very foreign concept. This website explains that since there's no direct equivalent of the English word hello in Tagalog or Filipino they greet each other with kumusta (which is of course literally 'how are you?'). Although, I will tell you that almost 100% of the time, we use 'hello' and 'hi' when speaking Tagalog. The writer of that article probably just needed a word that wasn't the same as 'hello' and 'hi'. In...