If you’ve never been to Spain, you may not realize that a lot of American movies are shown here, but not with subtitles. No, instead they’re dubbed into the Spanish language, and often the title is changed—sometimes for obvious reasons. You see, The Bucket List title just wouldn’t work in Spain, where they don’t use the idiom “to kick the bucket,” meaning “to die.” Sure, they have their own idioms, but the title was changed to Antes de Morir (Before Dying), which makes sense and gets the point across. Back in the day—that is, the 80s—cartoon characters often had their names “translated.” By translated I mean changed into Spanish names that would perhaps be more palatable for Spanish audiences. I find these names hilarious, and I sometimes even prefer the Spanish names! Here’s a list of some of my favorites:
Triki—Cookie Monster
(Alternate spellings: Triqui, Triky.) Also known as el monstruo de las galletas, Triki is known for saying, “¡Yo querer galletas!” and “¡Yo comer galleta!”, not exactly the most correct form of Spanish, but he gets his point across.
Coco—Grover
Coco means coconut in Spanish, referencing how Grover’s head looks a bit like a coconut split in half.
Epi y Blas—Bert and Ernie
La Rana Gustavo—Kermit the Frog
La cerdita Peggy—Miss Piggy
Jorgito, Juanito y Jaimito—Huey, Dewey, and Louie
Tío Gilito—Scrooge McDuck
El Pato Lucas—Daffy Duck
Piolín—Tweety Bird
Los Picapiedra—The Flintstones
From L-R: Dino, Pebbles, Vilma Picapiedra, Pedro Picapiedra, Pablo Mármol, Betty Mármol, and Bamm-Bamm
Los Pitufos—The Smurfs
I love “Jorgito, Juanito, y Jaimito,” that’s the most logical [non-literal] translation to me.
I agree with Revé. I love “Jorgito, Juanito y Jaimito.” Kermit to Gustavo was pretty good too. Thanks for sharing this, Kaley!
Someone was just telling me about Gustavo la Rana the other day!! Epi y Blas seems like the perfect “translation” for Bert & Ernie ^_^
Haha glad to see the Smurfs made it on here! They are originally Belgian which surprised me since I didn’t know this until last year. Their real name is Les Schtroumpfs which is pronounced pretty much how it is spelled (meaning impossible).
I’m loving Gustavo for Kermit, that one is pretty random.
You haven’t even gotten to the random characters that don’t exist in the US! My boyfriend talked about Espinete all the time, which is a Barrio Sesamo character who looks like a porcupine (I think he is?).
Haha I was unaware of Espinete! So how did they do that, did they just add extra scenes with him? I mean unless they also did the puppetry here in Spain, but I was under the impression that they dubbed it?
he is a porcupine Cat and very nice!! those characters were real with people inside the suits…they were an important part of Barrio Sesamo along with those american cartoons that were dubbed into Castilian.
the following video shows both the real characters and dubbed cartoons:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GyJvA5oEk7o
I love the pitufos – here in Malaga a pitufo is also a small baguette! But near Ronda is Juzcar – un pueblo pitufo! They took a white village and painted it all blue! It’s pretty cute – not a whole lot to see but a fun day trip from this area.
This is so cute! When I was little, my nickname was Grover so I guess if I grew up in Spain, I’d have been Coco :)