Customer Reviews

El gato en el sombrero/ The Cat In The Hat

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

This is a literal translation of The Cat in the Hat, and it loses all of what makes Dr. Seuss special. The cadence, rhythm and rhyme are all missing in this very uninspired translation. If you want to read Dr. Seuss in Spanish, try Juevos Verdes con Hamon. That translation was done right!

A literal translation of Cat in the Hat does great damage to Dr. Seuss' original idea to teach children how to read. The Spanish version does not accomplish the goal. It contains little or no rhyme, uses words beyond a beginning reader's level, and does not entice the child to read the book in spanish.

The literal, word-for-word translation destroys the flavor and fun of this classic. See Aida Marcuse's translations to see what can be done with Seuss by someone who puts in a bit of effort. It is not hard to rhyme spanish!

My daughter owns a wonderful collection of books in Spanish. This is possibly the worst translation I have ever seen. While books like Green Eggs and Ham are fun to read in Spanish, this one is a torture. They should find a new translator, one who can maybe even rhyme once in a while, and reissue this fantastic book.

The Spanish portion of this book doesn't rhyme. I have seen other Dr. Seuss books in Spanish that do. This one is a direct translation of the English. I think it would have been a lot more effective to stray from the English enough to make the Spanish rhyme too!

We first bought "Huevos Verdes con Jamon" an excellent translation of "Green Eggs and Ham." The translator, Aida E. Marcuse, managed to play with the wording to retain the "Seussian" rhyme, rhythm, and whimsy. Based on that, we bought this bilingual edition without inspecting it first--big mistake!

I am an Anglo-American who learned Spanish as an adult, and I could have done this translation. Carlos Rivera's translation looks like he took a English-Spanish dictionary and went through the text line by line, translating each word in turn. The result is clunky, non-rhyming, and completely devoid of the charm so characteristic of Dr. Seuss's works. A child exposed to this book might come to think of Spanish as a dull, clunky language compared to the fun English text. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Spanish is much easier to rhyme than English, so this translation makes no sense whatsoever.

My suggestion to Random House: call Aida E. Marcuse and get her to do the same quality translation for "El Gato Ensombrerado" that she did for "Huevos Verdes con Jamon."

Before you buy this book -- use the "view it online option".

As the conflicting opinions point out:

1) It has neither rhyme nor rythm in Spanish (e.g., it is not a Dr. Seuss book but a literal translation.

2) If you want a faithful translation it seems to do that

My opinion: There are plenty of parallel, side by side, etc. story books and the fun of Seuss is lost.

But if you LOOK at the view it online, then you can decide if it meets your needs.

Not only does this lose all the wit and charm of the original, it's not even very good as a Spanish primer. I can't imagine a real Spanish speaker using this kind of convoluted syntax. If you're looking for a fun Spanish children's book to read, then "Huevos Verdes con Jamon" (Green Eggs and Ham) is a much better choice, as well as many of the other Aida Marcuse translations. If what you want is a good vocabulary-builder transliteration, try the Spanish versions of P.D. Eastman's Books ("Corre, Perro Corre!" or "Eres tu Mi Mama?"). Anything but this.

I read The Cat in the Hat in Spanish and did not like it at all. The beauty of the English version is how Dr. Seuss combines the words to make them go well together, but in Spanish, this just does not happen. In my opinion, this is a book that should NOT be translated.....at least not into Spanish. I was raised in Mexico City and attended up to my second year of College in Mexico, then graduated from a US university, so I am fluent in both languages. The Cat in the Hat is one of my daughter's favorite books, but we only read it in English, I would not want her to hear the Spanish version!

This is a put-down to the Spanish language. It is literally translated- word-for-word, and obviously that does not work with any kind of translation. The translator has to use his/her discretion to transmit the message through whatever type of medium they are working with. In this case, Dr. Seuss's writing is playful and rhyming- this translation does not do this book any justice. They should really never have published this. Even as a non-native speaker of Spanish, I know that this translation is not well-done. My suggestion-- go read "Huevos verdes con jamon", which is wonderful.