I have had many opportunities of late in which the phrase "bring it on" was useful and appropriate. From games of monopoly, the serving of dessert, to discussions of trials and the resulting sanctification within. I have related to a few friends what I believed to be the Spanish translation of this most useful phrase:
Traigalo.
My reasoning was such: It is a command and should therefore use the imperative form of the verb
traer which means
to bring. I believed the imperative to be
traiga and I was mostly correct, but more on that in a moment.
The
lo is the pronoun signifying
it. Because we are using the imperative voice, the pronoun is tacked on to the end of the word giving us
traigalo.
To translate the
on is not possible without losing all the coolness we have thus far created within the translation. Which sounds better:
traigalo or
traigalo en? For our purposes, we are dropping the
on/en and calling it "understood". We can do that because we are adding to the abundance of existing Spanish slang even now.
So it seems as if we are done, right?
That was until Sunday night over a rousing game of monoploy with a few of the trusty, hard-working, and masters of the Spanish language Peru Mission interns, it was brought to my attention that
traiga is the Usted/formal form of the command. So one would use it when speaking to a doctor, a pastor, or say, one's grandmother. We all agreed that it would always be inappropriate to tell one's grandmother to "bring it on" and especially the grandmother that only speaks Spanish and that not many occasions arise to tell one's doctor or pastor to do so.
Thus the appropriate correction was made and
traiga was changed to the informal form of
trae. Tack on the
lo and add an accent mark over the "a". Call the
en understood and you get :
Tráelo.
A useful phrase that is versatile and fun. Except with one's grandmother.
Just wait. It will be in the Spanish dictionary 10 years from now.
