Lost In a Translation

Some men dream things that never were and say, “Why not?” I see things as they are and obsess endlessly about “Why?!”

Sunday, 17 September, I flew to Seattle to meet the train from St. Paul, which was carrying my mom, the younger of my two sisters (both of them younger than I) and my baby brother (about a foot taller than I).

After cramming myself into the center seat, I checked the in-flight magazine for movies. I was disappointed that X-Men 2 was showing on the way out: I had missed the original; also, I have little interest in transsexuals. Though I had to sleep on Wednesday night’s return flight, I noticed that movie would be Nacho Libre, which the accompanying Spanish synopsis called Super Nacho. My complex thought process went something like this:

Nacho Libre = Super Nacho?

Though 8th grade Algebra cost me a stretch in summer school, I can work this simple equation.

First cancel out the common denominators. That would be the “Nacho”s.

Nacho Libre = Super Nacho?
Libre = Super?

Next, simplify to English [“Libre” to “Free” and “Super” to “Super.”]

Nacho Libre = Super Nacho?
Libre = Super?
Free = Super?

Finally, factor “Free” and “Super” into their definitions.

Free =

1. “Not imprisoned or enslaved[;]
2. “Not controlled by
obligation or the will of another[;]
3. “Having political independence.”

Super =

1. “Above; over; upon[;]
2. “Superior. . . .”

So then what? I guess, total the definitions of “Free” and those of “Super.”

3 ≠ 2

Therefore—

Free ≠ Super
Libre ≠ Super
Nacho Libre ≠ Super Nacho

It didn’t add up: Why take one Spanish title and “translate” it to another Spanish title with a different meaning?

Nothing in my half century provided a ready answer. St. Matthew’s, where I survived fourth through sixth grades under the mailed fist of the Sisters of Notre Dame, gave me a rudimentary facility with Spanish and a pathological terror of penguins. But, though I could tell “b de burro” from “v de vaca,” request directions to the bibliotheque, and even know what a bibliotheque is, I’d learned naught of the duplicity and depravity of Hollywood.

So I must research. For the tech-savvy, couch-potative researcher, the Internet is the bibliotheque of first and last resort. Since 1980, I’ve moved far beyond the young—well, younger—court reporter who scoffed at using a “word processor” for court-martial transcripts: “I don’t need no stinking word processor; I am a word processor.” My personal computer is now a great time-saver: Time I once spent sleeping, rough-housing with my German Shepherd dog of four years, or conversing with my Korean-born wife of 14 years, I now spend blogging my rabid views, reconnecting with old friends (and sometimes remembering why we lost touch), and reading news and opinion from across the English-speaking world. A Google search for “nacho libre super nacho” yielded a synopsis on La Butaca (“the armchair”) that, obligingly translated by the same Google, tells us:

“Nacho . . . is a man without talent. One grew up in a monastery in
Mexico of which now he is the cook, but does not seem to fit. Nacho loves the
orphans for whom it cooks, but everything what lets knows fatal. According to
him, because it has a terrible raw material. Account occurs of which it must
ingeniar them to it to cook something better for “the orphaned poor men who do
not have anything”… and, of step, to impress to the precious Sister Incarnation
(Ana of the Reguera). The idea is happened to him to make money in the free
fight and there it discovers that it has an innate gift. It is united to a
little conventional companion, Skeleton (Héctor Jiménez), a man delgadísimo, and
it feels for the first time that it has an objective in the life. But the nuns
of the monastery are totally against the free fight and to Nacho does not have
left more remedy than to take it one double life. It hides his identity behind a
blue mask and one faces the most famous fighters of Mexico, decided to that the
orphans live better.”

Well, that raised more questions than it answered. A direct answer is not out there.

I then thought: Some products must be rebranded for export: For example, Chevy’s Nova translates to “It does not go.” I wondered whether “free nacho” had some negative connotation for Spanish speakers. Maybe the word “nacho” provided a clue. I checked Bartleby.com for “nacho.”

“NOUN: . . . A small, often triangular piece of tortilla topped
with cheese or chili-pepper sauce and broiled.
“ETYMOLOGY: American Spanish,
possibly [an] alteration of ñato, pug-nosed, ugly, poor . . . . .” “

After becoming all I could be in the U.S. court-martial system, I labored a year in the New Jersey court-marital system, clerking for a Burlington County family part judge, encountering many volatile people and many bizarre causes for domestic strife. Still, I never met a party of any cultural background, no matter how hypersensitive, who might have taken offense at being called “Free Nacho.”

“Independent Burrito”? “Uncontrolled Taco”? Could be fighting words. But “Willful triangular piece of tortilla topped with cheese or chili-pepper sauce and broiled”? No problema. “Impulsive, pug-nosed, ugly, or poor?” Not high praise, but not a marital tort, either.

So here I am, older, more knowledgeable, yet no wiser. And that, as my own long-suffering spouse often tells me, is the story of my life.