Translation - Japanese-Spanish - 猿でござる。

Stevo:

Según la versión en italiano que fue aceptada, debería ser: Esto es un mono.

Quieres editar?

Creo que la version italiana no es correcto. No hay ningun reflejo de la palabra "esto" en la version japonesa, ni en el contexto. Es solamente "Hay mono" o quizas "Es un mono."
Por eso, no voy a editarlo. Puedes hacer lo que quieres.

stevo

The Japanese sourcetext says: 'Es un mono'. Had it been 'esto es un mono' then you would have had the following addition:これわ
('kore wa'; これ (kore) meaning this, わ (wa) being a grammatical indicator) and the sentence would have looked like:

これわ猿でござる

So Stevo is right, the Italian version as it is now is incorrect.

Ok guys, so the other versions are wrong?

Ian could you have a look?
Maybe you can give an opinion here.

CC: IanMegill2

Hi Lilian,
You know, actually this is kind of a "joke" text. The Romanization is:
Saru de gozaru
"Saru" means "monkey" and "de gozaru" is a strange archaic way of using the very polite form of the verb "to be."Usually, in modern Japanese, people say "gozaimasu," not "gozaru."
The reason why they use this strange polite form is, "gozaru" sounds like "saru," so saru de gozaru is a kind of play on words, à la japonaise...
It was a "funny phrase" that people used to use maybe about five (?) years ago here in Japan. (Like in America, people often used to say "Where's the Beef?" because an old lady on a popular TV commercial said it. Did you ever hear of that?)
So now you know why this kind of strange text is here: I think someone wanted to see how we would translate this "play on words/rhyme/joke phrase" into other languages.
Now of course, in English, the "joke" feeling is lost. But how can we translate the meaning? Well, we can think of it in context: if I asked you "What is that animal?" you could reply "saru de gozaru." In English, we would have two options: we could say
"It is a monkey."
or simply
"A monkey."
But as you know, we could not say
*"Is a monkey"
If I understand Spanish grammar, though, I think you could say
Es un mono
and this is very close to the Japanese
Saru = monkey + de gozaru = be verb.
So maybe "Es un mono" is the best translation into Spanish of this?

Thanks Ian...very clarifying, as usual.

So I'll validate it the way it is.

Idioms and sayings are always puzzling for translators, aren't they?

Maybe we should tell Xini that the Italian should be
é una scimmia?
Is that grammatically correct in Italian?

Why was the phrase "Saru de gozaru" popular a few years ago? Was it in an ad or part of an event? What's the context it originated from?

stevo