![[0047] Threat Of Divorce](http://www.sandraandwoo.com/comics/2009-04-02-[0047]-threat-of-divorce.png "[0047] Threat Of Divorce")
If you are a new reader, you should read the previous comic strip to understand what’s going on in this one.
Aldebaran is a huge star in the constellation Taurus 65 light years away from the sun. Not to be confused with Alderaan, the home planet of Princess Leia in Star Wars.
- Sandra: Okay, gotta go home.
- Alien (mother): That’s it! Next year, we’re going to fly to Aldebaran for sun bathing! Or I want divorce!
- Alien (son): Daddy, I need to go potty.
- Alien (father): Shh, be quiet! I think it moves.
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so they were waiting for her to move… how ironic
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…I wonder how all that would be pronounced.
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@Myst: I’m imagining cat meows.
I’m trying to translate the words on that poster in the background, but I got the cheap dictionary, so best I can come up with is, “Galaxy’s birth, this is”.
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Oh wait, maybe the poster says, “We’re stopping, that’s final!”
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Maybe it says “I visited the sulfur mines of Jupiter and all I got was this lousy poster”?
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“Not in MY nebula!”
I’ve never seen “sunning” used as a verb like this. I know you can have “to sun oneself” but normally you’d say sunbathing, or “to get a tan”. Wouldn’t you? I don’t know how it is in the USA, but I’ve never heard it over here. Just wondering if it’s one of those faux-English words like “Ein handy”
I don’t think that “for sunning” is really wrong, but “for sun bathing” is probably better so I changed it.
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I do hear “sunning” used, but not with the “for” and not so much with respect to vacation. You’re more likely to hear ” A snake is sunning itself on that rock” or something along those lines.
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That’s what I mean – a snake suns itself; I sun myself, you sun yourself – it’s reflexive.
However… can’t argue with Novil on this one — it does exist and is used, evidently!
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Did we ever figure out whatthe poster says?
I’ll give the translation in our first Sandra and Woo book. :evilgrin:
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I guess the recession even hurts off planet tourism.
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I think, I’m not sure on this, but I think that “sunning” is something one does to heat oneself up to an appropriate temperature for functioning (like a snake or lizard), whereas “sun bathing” is a recreational activity meant to use the sun’s heat to relax or tan.
Quite possibly just a matter of connotation.
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Ha! I believe the 3 arrows in (3) mean “move”!
Off-topic: Danke fuer dein Kommentar auf das TWCL-Forum! Irgendwie sehr typisch Deutsch, voll technisch und sachlich
Ich wollte nur darstellen, dass das Guertel mit Bluetooth-Technology ersetzt wurde. Illogisch, aber Webcomics duerfen so sein, oder?
Sorry for my sucky German. Love Woo by the way, been reading for a while now.
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I’ve heard people use the phrase ‘for sunning’ but only in the exact context used up there (I’m assuming how it was used based on comments).
I also think the dad is an almanak. A species spotter. A stark raving loon among aliens. I also like the fact that the only clothes they’re wearing seem to be hats.
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There is one sign all three aliens use, the triangular one that is last in the father’s and son’s first line. Guess that means “I” which is the only word the translations have in common.
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so now you include space features?
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@Rags: I do concur. Also, the vertical line followed by the dot and the comma-looking sign are repeats from individual speech bubbles. Judging by the triangle meaning “I”, the open triangle with a vertical line might be a broader form of “I”, like “us”. The second symbol in the poster is similar to the symbol that might mean “to pee”, so I’d guess either birth or crapping.
I love decoding and translating stuff.
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…or maybe that was “need”, making the second symbol possibly “don’t need”.
Okay I’ll stop now.
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I think the circle-dash-circle plus x in the sons speech bubble means “parent” whereas the flag (or circle-fang thing) means “male” or something equivelant, so directly translated it would be “parent male”, not father.
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Here’s a thought: It’s exactly the same in the german version, so maybe you’d have to translate from that version
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Well it would make sense for th alien language to use a different grammatical set of rules than either English or German, so we would have to simply boil it down to the basics.
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I would have preferred Sunning to suntanning, it makes them seem more alien.
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Wow, that’s the most thoughts on sun-bathing i have ever heard. And i hear quite a lot.
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Srry, i take that back, i meant read. I cant hear typed words. Go figure eh?
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…All the cops in the donut shop say
Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh
Talk like an egyptian…
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Heh, it seems strange to me that with a Deutsch background you’d have to set it all in the states for one thing … or take on an english-language checker as everything’s been fine so far. But then, trying to cater to an international audience often means “start with the Americans” does it not
who largely probably wouldn’t know how much a euro was worth if you’d used that instead of dollars (hehe — ok maybe that’s unfair … as a Brit I’m *still* getting used to the current economic climate meaning £1 more or less = €1 (and $1.50) rather than €1.50 (and $2.00) :p)
(Well, also, how else would you have enough wild racoons to menace Woo? They’d have to be badgers or something instead)
Looking over the German pages, if they were an earthbound family I’d probably have translated it as “flying to the sun” or “flying for a sunshine break” or a few other variations on that. Problem is with aliens in a spacecraft the connotations of saying exactly that may come out wrong! So the indirect translation sometimes works better when there isn’t a single word in the target language that accurately expresses the single word in the source.
Also interesting how the baby alien is saying something different in the two tongues (De: is going to be sick, En: needs to go potty) but it works as a similar sort of call in the same length of sentence rather than trying to squeeze in a longer english version.
BTW I know it may mean time lost redrawing it, but no similar english->german translation on “Bara(c)k Obama is a(n) Communist Pig”?
The first would be the same at least, there must be some other mid-sentence misspelling that could then be twisted to fit… even if it’s ein(e) kommunistische Schwein* (or kom(m)unistische, kommunisti(s)che…) etc.
*Thank you google translate, assuming it’s correct – I was just looking for a straight dictionary and probably would have got it wrong.
Estonian translation just for the hell of it: Barack Obama on kommunistlik siga
and Galican, whatever that is: Barack Obama é un comunista de suínos
:p
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and points for anyone who guesses this without needing to back-translate it 20 times
Barack Obama huwa komunista tal-majjal
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oooh one more:
GarrettWilliams — have you just spotted all three of your facial features in a Breakfast Brioche, meaning you’re destined to eat it?
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I think this would be funnier without the translation.
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My guess on the poster: Button press sequence for a cheat code on the PlayStation 5!