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 ...
A few days ago, someone from Spain who purchased a copy of El Diutay Principe sent this article about a Filipino dish called Picadillo . I never knew that this dish was called Picadillo (although a quick search online will confirm this). Since coming to Manila, I have only heard this dish being called Giniling in carenderias which means something that is ground. The article also says that this dish is similar to the Spanish dish called jardinera . Interestingly, I found out that there is also a Filipino dish called hardinera . When I was growing up in Zamboanga city, the dish I knew as Picadillo consisted of ground beef with cubed white squash which we called calabaza blanco . Today, I chanced upon a post from the Lutong Cavite Facebook page talking about the Caviteño dish called Picadillo. The reason that I decided to write this article was because it was very similar to the Picadillo in Zamboanga city ...