Vamos, alégrame el día

Vamos, alégrame el día!

I swiped the title for today's post from the Transparent word-for-the-day selection, alegrarle el día al alguien (found on the side panel of this blog).  Actually, if you click on the definition, it takes you to the Transparent language site and gives a more detailed definition and an example.  The idiom it provides with this word is 'Vamos, alégrame el día, which means roughly 'Go ahead, make my day.'  As you probably know, this expression gained international notoriety when uttered threateningly by Clint Eastwood in the 1983 film Sudden Impact.


I've never seen the movie (or if I have, I've forgotten), but I think Mr. Eastwood delivers these defiant words during a hold-up in which someone has a gun to a woman's head.  Harry Callahan (Eastwood) doesn't back away from the situation but holds a gun into the robber's face, calmly daring him to shoot the woman, as he suggests that doing so would give him the opportunity to rid the world of one more poor excuse for a human being.

This Spanish equivalent of an English idiomatic expression seems to me a little unusual in that the Spanish version is very similar to the English in structure and use of vocabulary.  According to Google Translate, the infinitive alegrar means to brighten or to liven up.  Vamos is an imperative here meaning 'Let's go!' (sort of 'I'm ready; let's do it!').  And, of course, el día is ,the day,' or a better translation here, 'my day.'  The definite article el here makes the phrase even more powerful, as if to say 'Go ahead, make this specific day, this moment, immortal.'  Maybe the day was not unforgettable, but the phrase itself became a part of American slang, spoken whenever we want to assure someone that we mean business.

This leads me to movie titles.  I'm sometimes amused when English language U. S. movies and TV shows are retitled for international distribution.  Usually it's understandable why the original titles of films need to be changed when distributed to non-English speaking countries.  The title may be extremely idiomatic or may reference some cultural aspect of the U. S. that a non-American would not comprehend.  But often the films are given titles that are radically different.  The movie Grease, for example, becomes Vaseline (presumably, because men used to put petroleum jelly on their hair to slick it back).  But an example that illustrates my point better is the Spanish title for Weekend at Bernie's:  Este Muerto Está Muy Vivo (This Dead Man Is Very Much Alive).  What's wrong with a literal translation of  Weekend at Bernie's?  Seems to me that the Spanish title is a 'spoiler' that gives away too much of the plot.  The Spanish rendition of Hangover is priceless:  ¿Qué Pasó Ayer? 'What happened Yesterday.'  Perfecto!

Hasta mañana...

Note:  Many of the movie titles mentioned in this post were drawn from a site called on-the-couch.com