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 ...
One of the major challenges encountered in translating The Little Prince into Chabacano was the fact that we tend to borrow a lot of words from other languages when we speak. Most borrowed words from Cebuano or Hiligaynon have long been accepted in the Chabacano language and perhaps some may even have been there during its crystallization. In some instances, you will find words which mean the same thing but one would be from Spanish and the other from a native language. A good example is mabuling and masucio. This pair of words mean the same thing but come from different languages. Most people would probably assume that the one from Spanish is the more "correct" term but Chabacano actually went through a Rehispanification process during the 20th century so it is hard to make conclusions. In fact, I have across an old Chabacano text that has several native words that are no longer in use today. In translating El Diutay Principe, I wanted the Chabacano used to be a true represe...