Pandemonium

Let’s learn a new word today: pyrrhic. According to two dictionaries:

1885, from Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who defeated Roman armies at Asculum, 280 B.C.E., but at such cost to his own troops that he was unable to follow up and attack Rome itself, and is said to have remarked, “one more such victory and we are lost.”

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper

Pyrrhic Victory
A victory in which the victor’s losses are as great as those of the defeated.

Collins English Dictionary, Millennium Edition, © 1999 Harper Collins

Why do I think we need this word? Because yesterday I saw an episode of Boston Legal in which they talked about “victoria empírica”. Thinking it was a bad translation, I switched to the English audio and heard them talking about an “empirical victory”… The victory was pyrrhic because although the defendant was found guilty, she didn’t even go to jail.

So, failing grade for the American scriptwriters who don’t know their own language and failing grade for the Spanish translators who didn’t see the lack of logic and just translated the sentence.

P.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Translating/Translation, Of words. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.