Customer Reviews

Buenas noches a todos / The Going to Bed Book (Spanish edition)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"The Going to Bed Book" is a favorite of my little nephew. I've read it to him since he was an infant ... but he doesn't know almost any English. So you can imagine I looked forward to the Spanish version, so that I could read both to him for some bilingual cuddle time. BIG MISTAKE! This translation is one of the worst I've ever seen in terms of capturing the spirit of the original.

Sure, in literal terms, the following express the same dictionary meaning:
(English) "They hang their towels on the wall / and find pajamas, big and small."
(Spanish, back-translated) "They hang their towels on the wall / and look for pajamas, big and little, as you can see."
(Cuelgan las toallas en la pared / y buscan piyamas grandes y pequeñas, como se ve.)

Gone is the rhyme. Gone is the use of small, familiar words so the child can pretend to "read" along. There's an occasional rhyme ("resquicio" / "ejercicio"), but for the most part it's a charmless and clumsy butchering of the text we loved so much.

You may think it's asking too much to expect a translated version to be as good as the original. It's not. Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham is delightful in Spanish. Sandra Boynton's own Moo, Baa, La, La, La has a Spanish translation that's as precious and easy to read as you could ever want (see my review of Muú, Beee, Así Fue). It's tricky work and requires careful substitution, but it can be done if a company does what is necessary to secure a good translation. This time they didn't -- maybe next time they will.

I did read the previous reviews on the book's poor translations, yet I never imagined they would be so bad! How can publishing houses do this?? The pictures and the characters are fun, yet if you are a native Spanish Speaker, this book will hurt your eyes, and you will end up making up better translations as you go along. The pictures are fun, and the story is relevant for children as they prepared to go to bed, but other than that...I agree, you are better off buying the English language version!

The book arrived on time, as the vendor promised and it was in good shape also. Thank you for being honest.

This is my daughter's first nighttime book and she really likes it. She's 8 months old right now and has learned to flip the pages!

Was excited to find this book and give to my nephew but the board is really thin and cheap. I have an 8 mos. old now and know how important it is for the board books to be tough and sturdy. The text and pictures themselves are fine.

I'm disappointed with the book. It's cute but I think it's missing the most important point, when the characters are sleepy in bed. There is no illustration of them in bed. That would have helped my kid to visualize what you do after say "good night."

I love the book, I have the English version which is adorable so I wanted the Spanish version as well. The translation is acceptable.

Cute book. I'm so thankful many of these books are now translated into Spanish. This is very encouraging to bi-lingual/bi-cultural families.

The previous reviews were written a few years ago, so I don't know if the book was changed (the Spanish version), but we own both the English and Spanish books, and I think the translation was great. The rhyming was done excellently, and the Spanish version conveyed the meaning within the English version. My daughter loves this book and we read it practically every night. It is very cute! We ended up getting the other sandra boynton spanish board books because of this one.

I bought this for my grand daughter, we want her to have two languages, and we love Sandra Boynton,so I appreciated her making this fun book!Thanks!