Pinocchio (Intermediate Bulgarian Text)

The following is a retelling of the story of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi.

Имало едно време в Италия майстор дърводелец на име Джепето. Той си нямал деца и дълго търсел говорещо дърво, от което да си измайстори кукла за свой син. Най-сетне в един мразовит ден той открил вълшебното дърво и започнал да дяла от цепеницата човече.

И какво мислите се случило?

Издялал Джепето главата на човечето и като издълбал очите, то го погледнало насмешливо. Оформил устата, а тя, вместо да каже “Скъпи татко”, му се изплезила. Сглобил Джепето ръцете на куклата, а те го пернали по челото. Сглобил и краката – ритнали го. Ядосал се тогава дърводелецът:

– Това човече е голям немирник. За назидание ще го нарека на името на стария просяк от парка Пинокио!

Transliteration of “Боженци”: Bonus Post

While I was writing about the village of Bozhentsi, I came face to face with a very common issue that occurs when converting between alphabets: transliteration. Not only do some Cyrillic letters lack direct equivalents, they are also differently transliterated in different Western languages. I’ll use the name of the village of Bozhentsi as an example.

Poet Profile: Petya Dubarova

Petya Dubarova

Petya Dubarova was born on April 25, 1962. She studied in the English-language high school in the seaside city of Burgas. She committed suicide, not yet 17, on December 4, 1979. She wrote poetry from a very early age. Her first published works appeared in the periodicals “Септемврийче” (“Child of September”) and “Народна младеж” (“People’s Youth”), in the magazines “Родна реч” (“Native tongue”) and “Младеж” (“Youth”). Her moral and spiritual guide was the poet and translator Grigor Lenkov.

During her short life Petya Dubarova penned original poetical works, impressions, fables and short stories which stand out in the literary life of 70’s Bulgaria with their flowing, daring ease and freshness.

The poetess writes about intransient human values: sea, summer, rain, youth, love and poetry, returning them to their archetypal meanings and beauty. Her poetry bares the emotional face of a generation unwilling to accept conformism, hypocrisy and lies. Her disapproval of vice and crassness Dubarova expresses not only with her verse, but also with her refusal to participate in the illusions and falseness of a degrading society.

Bulgarians Around the World

I stumbled across Fusion Tables – a cool new Google feature that lets users create, merge and visualize tables, and immediately used it for something Bulgaria-related. The map below represents the number of Bulgarians per country, as estimated by the embassy or consulate of each country, for 2011.

“The Errors of Santa Claus” – Parallel Text

Due to a serious lack of parallel English-Bulgarian text for learners, I have decided to experiment with posting professional Bulgarian translations of English-language material and aligning the source and translated text for the benefit of learners of Bulgarian. What follows is the beginning of a short story by Stephen Leacock.

Numbers in Bulgarian

Bulgaria uses the Indo-Arabic numeral system known around the world.

We begin, as always, counting from 1 to 10.

1. Едно (ednó)
2. Две (dve)
3. Три (tri)
4. Четири (chét’ri)
5. Пет (pet)
6. Шест (shes‘)
7. Седем (sédem)
8. Осем (ósem)
9. Девет (dévet)
10. Десет (déset)

The Definite Articles of Bulgarian

Image source: Icko (http://grasshopper.xroads-bg.com/open.php?id=21)

Never mind five names for “uncle”, the definite article in Bulgarian is a truly cross-eye-inducing grammar nugget.

The definite article in English is easy: “the“. That’s it. The tub, the king’s wizards, the pretty pony. Not so in Bulgarian.