Groups - el hipapótamo
PoemaSoNos
Here's one I made earlier..
It’s a silly little quatrain by Hilaire belloc
I shoot the Hippopotamus
With bullets made of platinum,
Because if I use leaden ones
His hide is sure to flatten 'em
I’m rather pleased because I’ve been tinkering with this for a while but I just could not get the meter to work with the stress in hipopótamo. It was always in the wrong place.This had me coming up with all kinds of weird lines to fit to the first line. Heres one of many early drafts
Yo disparo el hipopótamo
Con balas he hecho de platino,
Porque si usara los de plomo
es seguro que ,el piel, los aplastaré
Ugly or what? I started to understand where bailaomooós came from when Just as I was about to upload this I spotted that if I kill the hippo rather than hunting or shooting it, it all falls into place.
Mato el hipopótamo
Con Balas son de platino
Porque si usa los de plomo
Los aplastarán es obvio
Well, it looks ok to me anyway, how does it sound to a spanish ear?
Too many los’s? incorrect use of the subjunctive? Can’t use con like that?
Please let me know if you can see any ways to improve it.
Or just join up and post a short poem with your translation for the groups consideration.
BTW, no hippos were harmed in the translation of this poem.
Cheers
Tags: poetry, grammar, vocabulary, hipopotamus, ,
in the Group Poemas son nos .
Comments (2) 
please login.
Comments Policy
Allowed comments do not necessarily represent the views of SpanishPod.com. We also reserve the right to reject personal attacks, false/unsubstantiated allegations, spamming of any kind, and comments that include vulgar language or libelous statements.
New lesson idea? Please let us know at spanishpod@praxislanguage.com.
I shoot the Hippopotamus
With bullets made of platinum,
Because if I use leaden ones
His hide is sure to flatten 'em
Mato al hipopotamo
con balas de platino
porque si uso las de plomo
su piel por seguro las aplana
warthooth, thanks for playing
is it necessary to shoot AT something? can we not just shoot or hunt? it doesnt matter in this case, but its the sort of thing i should know:-)
son was there simply to move the stress to coincide with hipopotamo. does it not work gramatically?
ie with bullets, they are of platinum. would a comma fix things?
thanks for correcting my gender issues with bullets.
I see where youre going with seguro. I moved it to the end simply so that all the lines ended with the same sound which was as close as i could get to the original ABCB rhyming scheme.
then I changed it to obvio because although they have the same number of sylables when said slowly somehow obvio seems to have one less when spoken at speed and to get seguro to work at the end of the line would have needed a translation of "to be sure" and a strong irish accent :-)
really the poem is simply an excuse for a very contrived rhyme for platinum. one can imagine he wrote it for a bet.
to really do it justice what we need is a spanish contraction that rhymes with platino then build the poem round that. they told me spanish doesnt have contractions but i've seen it done on this very site.
i realized t'other day that platino is "little silver" which is cool, right up there with mosquito
cheers