Translating 'Oh Dear'

“How difficult it can be to translate a text from a language I understand well to my mother tongue, right?” I thought to myself when I first opened The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune with the intention of forging my way as a new translator and bring this lovely book to the Czech audience. “Let’s see. What’s the first sentence?”

“Oh dear,” Linus Baker said, wiping the sweat from his brow.

“Oh dear,” I thought to myself and then spent about a week figuring out the best way to translate the first two words.

Don’t get me wrong, Czech has plenty of wonderful exclamations. There are the ones rooted in religious (Christian) expressions: panebože (lit. ’lord god’), bože (‘god’), proboha (lit. ‘for god’), ježišmarjá (lit. ‘Jesus Mary’), šmarjá (a weird abbreviation of the preceding expression), kristepane (lit. ‘Christ lord’), pane jo (lit. ’lord yes’). It seems that panenko skákavá (lit. ‘jumping doll’) also belongs to this group, apparently referring to the Virgin Mary, although why she is “jumping” is a mystery to me.

Then, there are the cruder phrases (and I’m only keeping to the words I’m still comfortable writing), like no ty vole (lit. ‘well you ox’), ty krávo (lit. ‘you cow’) or no doprdele (lit. ‘well, to the ass’). Among the cuter and/or more polite ones would belong, e.g., ježkovy voči (lit. ‘hedgehog’s eyes’), jé (something like ‘wow’), ó jé (lit. ‘oh wow’), a jéje (lit. ‘and gee’), no ne (lit. ‘well no’), hrome (lit. ’thunder’), no to snad (lit. ‘well that maybe’, meaning something like ’that can’t possibly –’), co (‘what’), ty kráso (lit. ‘you beauty’) or ty brďo (no idea how to translate this since it’s a full-on idiom and I don’t know what or whom brďo is or was).

Above, I’m giving you literal translations because trying to match the exact meaning of each expression on an actual, used exclamation in English is a Herculean task. I’m also only mentioning the ones I can think of from the top of my head without exhausting myself too much. For anyone interested (and speaking Czech), here is a professional 2012 paper on the topic in one of the most prominent Czech linguistics academic journals, Naše řeč ('Our Speech') .

The actual question was, which one is the main character, Linus Baker, most likely to use? In the beginning, Linus is a very by-the-book person, always following the rules and trying to do what’s proper, so it was pretty obvious I should cross the cruder phrases off my list of possible translations. At the same time, I didn’t want to use any of the religious expressions either since Linus is not religious whatsoever. This might not be the best argument because many non-religious people, including me, still use these phrases. After all, they are idioms, pretty much stripped of the original meaning. I’m a big user of panebože (lit. ’lord god’), and trust me, I don’t think of any god saying it. But still… I somehow didn’t want to do it. Linus seems much more thoughtful than I am, and it didn’t feel right.

So what we are left with are the softer expressions. I love ježkovy voči (lit. ‘hedgehog’s eyes’) because I find it hilarious. However, it’s more something my grandmother would say, not a 40-year-old guy. The single-word jé is more what you say when seeing something really nice, like when you meet a friend on the street: Jé, tebe jsem tady nečekala! (‘Wow, I didn’t expect to see you here!’). So it doesn’t fit the context of the first scene very well. Jéje suggests trouble. Ty kráso (lit. ‘you beauty’) sounds somewhat juvenile to me. Tough work.

Storytime: Trying to get feedback from others, I asked my parents what expression they thought would fit. My mom had a few suggestions, some of them are mentioned above. My father was evading answering, saying that it depends on the context. So I gave him a context straight from the book.

“Dad, what would you say if you suddenly saw me levitating an object with just the power of my mind?”

My father paused for a moment and then: “That you are very skillful!” (in Czech: Šikovná!)

Good to know I’ll be accepted even when I turn out to be a witch!

In the end, I went for propána (lit. ‘for lord’). To me, it is balancing on the boundary between the religious (originally referring to the god, or maybe Jesus, I’m not sure) that sounds neutral to my ear, but the meaning is even more stripped than with the rest of the expressions, partially probably also because pán can also simply mean ‘sir, mister’.

Phew. “Okay, here comes my translation”, I thought:

“Oh dear,” Linus Baker said, wiping the sweat from his brow.

“Propána,” řekl Linus Baker –

“Oh fuck, the continuous tense…”

*Note: I’m slightly dramatizing the chain of events (how unlike me!). I haven’t actually spent a week on ‘oh dear’ before moving on. I think I initially chose the weird but funny ježkovy voči (lit. ‘hedgehog’s eyes’) after maybe 10 minutes of thinking and then continued with the translation. I was, however, intensely pondering the issue for another week, always coming back to it and discussing it with anyone willing to listen and offer me their opinions. (Thank you, mom, dad, s, m, g, v, and anyone I have forgotten.)