ingléspañol

Pimp Mi Paseo

Recently someone asked me to translate "Pimp my Ride" into Spanish. They simply used "Pimp mi Paseo"

which brought about the interesting thing about translation: there are some things in which you MUST be brought up in the language in order to understand fully. English speakers see the title of the MTV show "Pimp my Ride" and understand implicitly that it means, "Make my Car Ostentaciously Decorative"

and probably never even stop to think that the verb "Pimp" is directly from the noun "Pimp" which has been stereotyped in the popular culture as being a man who, while collecting money from the prostitutes that he forces to work for him, is usually decorated in clothes that are ostentaciously decorative.

So what would be a synonymous phrase in Spanish? I don't know. Depends on whether an hispanic-speaking culture anywhere has adapted a term that has made a verb out of a noun simply for the sake of popularizing (or at least "romanticising") this particular form of criminal behaviour.

All told - language is fun and if you stop and think about it, truly and deeply, you begin to understand that our own words come to us and we know intrinsically what they mean without ever having to think about them. And when we DO think about them, sometimes we begin to see how ridiculous they are.

and how hard they are to translate.

Back to the subject: I don't know the verb choice, but I would say "my ride" could be translated into "muebles" the Mexican (or is it Chicano?) slang for car. As in:

[Spanish verb for "to Pimp"] mis Muebles.

If anybody has any ideas, please speak up!

VG

posted by Verble Gherulous @ 2:39 PM