Sounds like Ted's ("Ed-tay") being called "chump" in pig
Latin by Enoray. This is a children's "secret language" that
was barely used when I was a kid long ago, mostly by older
relatives talking to kids, but I'd think it was more
prevalent in Hammet's day. Challenging work you're doing!
Joy
Alexandre Hubner" <
alehubner@uol.com.br> said:
> I'm translating Hammet's "Red Harvest" into
Portuguese. In spite of some
> difficulties, I've managed to come through the
"underworld lingo" (even
> if not always able to convey all the subtleties of
the original - but
> that, I'm afraid, is what translation is
about...).
>
> It comes up at the end of chapter 24 ("Wanted"),
when Reno Starkey calls
> Ted Wright a "big umpchay". I've searched all the
reference I have
> access to and found nothing but for the character of
a Three Stooges
> movie ("I'll Never Hail Again", 1941) called Mr.
Umpchay - which,
> unfortunately, doesn't mean anything to
me.
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 10 Apr 2002 EDT