Little Red Cap
Yesterday, for reasons that need not concern us here, I was translating Little Red Riding Hood from Spanish to English.
My client wanted to make sure that I understood it and queried my translation. Why had I called the girl Little Red Riding Hood when she doesn’t have a hood? The Spanish name is Caperucita Roja; caperucita is a diminutive form of caperuza, which is a pointed cap (also of a pen for example), perhaps from the German name Rotkäppchen (little red cap). I explained to his astonishment (and he is a very cultured man) that the story was not indigenous to Spain but was very well known in English and that not only the name but the expressions such as ‘Once upon a time there was a little girl.’ ‘Grandma, what big eyes you have!’ and ‘All the better to eat you with, my dear,’ were formulaic and couldn’t just be translated directly from Spanish.
This particular version ended with a hunter jumping out of a cupboard to save Grandma, so I sent him a link to Roald Dahl’s splendid version of the story.
(Image, Wikipedia)
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