Translation - Romanian-English - Era odată un oraş de basm, locuit de prichindei

After pondering this translation for a long time and after seeing the Greek translation I decided I should ask a Romanian friend of mine for his opinion.
You see "Mites" appears like a proper name (it even starts with a capital!) and I just couldn't see where that came from. He said that "prichindei" means someone or something small and looking it up in his dictionary he came up with "imp" or "midget" as the English equivalent.

He wrote the following as his suggested translation.

"Once upon a time, there was a fairytale town, inhabited by midgets..."

Is there something both he and I are missing here? I know that "mite" can be used for something small but still!

Oh wow - I didn't know - I can't read Rumanian, but all of the folks I asked said this translation was OK. I'll ask Iepurica again, because although "mites" can be used for small things, they're actually annoying insects that infect people.

Iepurica, could you have a look at the notes under this translation please?

Thanks!

Definitely not "Mites". The word "princhindei" in Romanian means ONLY "small children". It is not used to anything else. But, because here can not be translated by "small children" (depends on what the original text reffers to), a suggestion can be using "dwarves" or even "hobbits" (by analogy with "Lord of the Rings". Again, it depends on the meaning of the source text.

Thanks lepurica! I like dwarves although I do agree that in such a case, without further context we can't be sure. So what do you think ladies? I have to edit a Greek translation (the last word is wrong period) and I depend on your opinions on the english translation to do that.

How about Lilliputians - from Gulliver's Travels?

... or how about simply "lived some little people" - or "elves" - another possibility.


Actually, if it only means "small children", why don't we translate it as "small children"?

Is it "princhindei", or "prichindei", I searched both in online dictionaries (which seem to be a mess for Romanian) and didn't get any results.
So if it means "little children", why did xristo translate by "the Mites". Personaly, I didn't see the Romanian version, and validated the French one according to the English one. I didn't see any problem, as "Mites" is with a capital letter. But about "small children" or "little children", what's just before "people called" doesn't let me think it's the right term, unless the English version is more erroneous again than what you told, but if it isn't, would sound strange to say:
"Once upon a time, in a town in fairyland, lived some people called the little children", wouldn't it? Unless we say "called the prichindei" (or "princhindei"...

http://www.castingsnet.com/dictionaries/
prichindel
sm imp, midget; (copil) chit

That's the only one I found by the way. Is it wrong? Can't prichindel (that's the singular) mean imp or midget for instance?

OH? one online Romanian-English dictionary which works! I'm glad it does, as all the others I tried were so messy! So there would be a typing mistake from the beginning, as it is an "i" typed in the Romanian text, and maybe it is "prichindel", as there are some polices of characters (like the "Lucida handwriting" one used on the site and also available on msn, that may let us mixing up the "i" and the "l", some months ago I mixed up Iepurica with lepurica -you can't see any difference but while typing, when the "I "and the "l" are validated), so midget is well know in the fairytale context, I suggest we use this term in our respective languages ("nains" in French) "Hobbits being too "Tolkien referenced", or "dwarves" could fit as well in English, or "little people"...
Up to you folks!

Actually I don't know, as I wouldn't like to harm small size people, I may let it as it is, as I find that "Mites" with a capital doesn't sound that bad; Or "prichindel", or "prichindei" which sounds exotic to French ears, why not...
Sorry, I'll see that tomorrow. Good night
(Thanks for the Romanian-English dictionary, irini, it may be usefull sometimes to check simple short texts in order to evaluate without being obliged to ask for a translation into English ...

"so midget is well know in the fairytale context"

No it's not - the usual word is "dwarf" in a fairytale context.

kafetzou, I'm glad you're here to let me know when I'm mistaking...I wouldn't edit the English version anyway, because of some lacks of knowledge in your mother-tongue.
So you've got several words in English, one to speak about small people in the current life, one for the fairy tales. Before, in France, "nains" was used for both, but nowadays has been replaced by "personnes de petite taille"(small size people)which is more convenient to people concerned by this disease .

Apparently, biologically, a dwarf is different from a midget, but both are used for (real) people who are shorter than normal.

But in fairytales, only "dwarf" is used - "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves", for example.

Aha - that explains why you translated it that way - I was wondering! But that's not what it says in the original Rumanian, I think.

Aha! Mystery solved! Thanks Xristo I agree with Kafetzou though. No matter how it was translated the Romanian text does not even have their name beginning with a capital so it's not a proper name. Anyway, the Greek translation (which I edited) had a wrong transcription of "Mites" but was sort of in the right track if you take "Mites" as a proper name. Proper names are not translated, they are transcribed.
If we are to go by the same logic of the English text Xristos posted we should call them Ακάρεα;

OH! so, what does it give once transcripted, this name "Ακάρεα"?, not "acariens", I hope?

Yeap, Ακάρεα is Acariens but then so is Mites more or less

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mite

Mind you, it used to mean small child too but I haven't heard it used this way lately (seen it in books though)

Not in English either. But Xristos' original translation is definitely not what it says in Rumanian. It says something more like "lived some dwarfs" - the word is not capitalized and it doesn't say they were "called" dwarfs.

I edited the way you said (dwarves) and erased "called" in the French version, according to the English one.

By the way, I had originally written "dwarves", but that looked funny to me, so I did a google search for "the plural of dwarf" and found out something very interesting: The original plural was "dwarfs", but because Tolkien used the form "dwarves" in The Hobbit, that began to be commonly used.