Spanish (page 25)

Beginners’ Spanish II (SPAN 203): Watching a Show

Amanda Caceres

For this cultural activity, I decided to watch an episode of a show with Spanish audio and English subtitles. Specifically, I wanted to watch a comedy, so I chose the first episode of King of the Hill, which was an American animated series that aired from 1997-2009 (“King of the Hill”).

Verbal comedy can be very difficult to translate in some cases, as many jokes of that type depend on wordplay or cultural references. I’ve already seen the first episode, so I was already familiar with the jokes. I decided to watch the episode with my mom, since she could explain some of the jokes I didn’t understand. There were many phrases that were not direct translations from English, such as “todos los cielos” as a translation of “for Heaven’s sake”. “Renacuajo” was also used as an insult a few times in the episode, though the English lines never included the word “tadpole”. According to my mom, ‘renacuajo’ is a phrase people use in a derogatory way, so it made more sense for them to use that than to directly translate. Interestingly, there was a particular line where they did opt for a direct translation, but it didn’t make sense in Spanish. Specifically, the main character’s son says “yes sir” in the original script, but it gets translated as “sí señor”, which my mom said was too distant a phrase to use with one’s father; “señor” wasn’t a fitting translation of “sir” given the context. I think that watching this episode has given me a few more casual phrases that I can now recognize or use in Spanish, such as “rayos” as an exclamation similar to “heck”, for example: “¿Qué rayos estás escribiendo?” Of course, some other changes were included outside of dialogue, like with character’s names (Hank Hill became Hector Reyes, Dale became Diego, etc.)

After learning about indirect and direct object pronouns in class, I took more notice of their frequent usage in dialogue. Hearing them used in a context outside of class helped me to get more used to understanding them. My understanding of Spanish has improved, as now I can understand preterite, imperfect, present continuous, and different pronouns, all of which were used throughout the episode. Of course, some of the phrases characters used were difficult for me to understand, sometimes due to the speed of the line delivery, and other times because I was unfamiliar with the phrase itself (this usually happened with jokes). I think that my mom was very helpful, because she was able to provide cultural context that I didn’t have. Language learning has to take place outside of a classroom as well as inside, since language is so intrinsically connected to culture.

Works Cited

“King of the Hill.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_the_Hill. Accessed 22

March 2024.