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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: The Role of Other Languages in Chabacano

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 representation of the language the way that it is spoken contemporarily and not an idealized version of it. Certainly, Spanish was the fallback if all else failed but I decided to keep this at a minimum, mostly in areas where the text is poetic or figurative.

Last February 1 and 2, I had the pleasure of attending a Little Prince event where I met the translator of the book (Faye Q. Flores Melegrito) into Ilokano (Ti Bassit a Prinsipe). It was a very interesting conversation that we had and the biggest surprise that I got was when she told me that they also relied on Spanish words in the Ilokano translation whenever they were having a hard time looking for an Ilokano word. When I told her about how I used the english word asteroid instead of the Spanish word asteroide in El Diutay Principe, I was shocked when she told me that they actually used the Spanish asteroide in the ilokano version! For me, using 'asteroide' was just so weird because I was pretty sure a lot of people probably wont even know how to pronounce it when they read it!

Faye Q. Flores Melegrito, translator of Ti Bassit a Prinsipe

it was a huge surprise for me because I had expected them to use Tagalog words as a fallback instead and not Spanish. I'm not sure what other languages this attitude is present in because I thought that this only existed in Chabacano.

So yes, more than a hundred years since the Spanish left, the Spanish language still plays a huge role in Philippine languages. Of course, this attitude is already shifting and I think that in the future, tagalog will definitely replace Spanish as the go-to language whenever no equivalent can be found in the translation's target language.

Right now, there is heavy disgust for the smallest of things such as using the Tagalog pinaka instead of de con todo. The other day, a Facebook page posted a telco ad in Chabacano and people reacted strongly against it.


Having done this for fifteen years already, I am well aware of the different attitudes that Chabacano speakers may have when it comes to their language.

In the end, the Ilokano version translator and I agreed that it was impossible to please everybody. In my case, I worked really hard to strike a balance between pleasing the purists and at the same time making my translation readable for everyone. That is why El Diutay Principe is a mixture of both descriptive and prescriptive translation.

Day 1 of The Little Prince Street Kohi Festival


At The Little Prince Street Kohi Festival Day 2

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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