Come again?

October 3, 2006 10:48 PM

Translationfilter: What does this odd little Wolverine comic say?
posted by eleyna to Writing & Language (4 answers total)

Neither my portuguese nor my soccer are great, but it might be fun to guess. ;) I think it's something along the lines of "I said to move laterally away, not separate the lateral," and it's a play on words with partir, which can mean to move away or to separate, and lateral as a direction or soccer position.
posted by weston at 11:10 PM on October 3, 2006

Basically agree with weston, it is a play on how, in the context of futbol, substiting the proposition o for pra makes a big difference.

'Partir' can mean break, slice, separate, divide.
'Pra', in this context, means across or by (I have trouble translating it to English).
'O' means the.
'Lateral' can refer to the sides of the field or to the position known in English, I beleive, as right or left defense or halfback.

A rough and very unfunny translation would be: "I said break through the defense running across/by the side of the field, not break the defender"
posted by Dataphage at 2:27 AM on October 4, 2006

Maybe the best English approximation would be "I said cut THROUGH the defense, not cut UP the defense!"
posted by Rock Steady at 6:21 AM on October 4, 2006

Perhaps it makes sense to translate it this way:
"I said cut through the defense laterally, not cut through the lateral defender."
posted by oddman at 6:33 AM on October 4, 2006