Een Droomvakantie voor Betty : part III
Or Dawn on the Coast, dutch version, part three: )
Well truly sorry you guys, I had lost my Dutch copy of this book - it wasn’t in the dozen or so places that I tend to put books or not even on one of my bookshelves. Then I stopped looking and when deep cleaning this weekend I found it behind a a cupboard in the living- I swear I’m not mrs Shafer! The usual suspects are my cat or my 4-year old boy, and I’m thinking the cat had little to do with it.... .
Chapter One
Chapter Two and Three
And back to where I left it:
Chapter 4
And if you remeber, in US books at least, and probably everywhere else, this is the Disneyland chapter. The chapter I never had. I’m soo sad. Well, when I say sad, I mean angry.
Stupid translators. I’m trying to picture how that went down, when writing book 4 and 5. Probably a few blondes and airheads together, and being from the Netherlands, probably smoking the good green stuff: “What do we do with this Sunny California Girl that suddenly comes to Steendam, how are we going to make that belieeeeeevable to our audience. Surely it’s unheard of an English girl to learn Dutch (or something to that matter)” “Oooh yeah we’ll just have to change this..., I KNOW, I know, You Guys! Let’s make her come from Suriname, that’s totally the same as the Netherlands (only, not) and then there’s no language troubles!” “But what if she ever goes back to California, what do we do then” Cue them laughing their heads of for ten minutes and going “ha! As if these books will last the year....” . Comes book 23 : “oh shit, we sure are in a pickle now. What do we do with this book. Disneyland chapter? Let’s make it up as we go along...”
Yeah, so my chapter 4 is your chapter 5. And Betty/Dawn is on her way to visit her all best friend Sunny. She could find this house with her eyes closed, apparently. I wish she’d give that a try, and promptly be run over by a Prius...
Anyway on to Sunny, who is waiting with an angisa - A Surinamian headscarfthingy. Why they felt the need to replace the word bandana - which we have and know over here - is again a strange fact. Is this to emphasize or convince us it really is Suriname here. They probably think the readers so stupid... “If we’re to use the word bandana, they’ll be on to us and know she’s actually a Californian girl! Better fog their minds and use angisa! Now they’ll never know!”
Well the reason she’s holding the bandana is to cover Betty’s eyes while awaiting the surprise. “Surprise, here a deep well I’ve dug out for you-oouu-ou -*thump*” But that does not happen, saddly.
Betty is at first not too happy when the bandana is lifted. Well, why would she, all that she can see is two girls (Julie Hendricks and Elsje Bloem) that she used to know. Not even very well, just okay. She’s all like “is this my surprise? Some surprise. I’d like the well, please”. I’d be confused too, if someone did that to me. Here’s the lame thing I’m so excited about! Be excited along with me!
Oh but ofcourse the surprise is yet to come when Sunny reveals it’s a meeting of..tada tada dum: The We Love Kids Club (we never had the little heart in our books). Apparently some of the Kool-Aid leaked out to Suriname, as these girls started their own Baby Sitting Club. Based on Betty’s letters. Because, yet again, no one else in the world is capable of coming up with this actually very basic and simple idea of a Baby Sitting Club. Gertie/Kristy has the one and only patent/copryright/rights reserved to that Great Idea. Christ.
Apparently these girls have meetings too, and distributed flyers too, and even have Kinderkoffers (Kid-Kits). So basically they copied everything of their East Coast “rivals”. O wait, not everything! They do not have officers and they don’t call back their customers to fix the appointment. Imagine that - a club meeting can be run withouth a president, vice president, ...and other bullshit functions that are not really needed. Well, maybe only the secretary bit, that can come in handy. But does Betty take this knowledge back home to Steemdam? Ofcourse not. Gertie wouldn’t believe her anyways. Or have her head for suggesting it.
Betty is also taken aback when one of the girls starts painting her nails. Imagine if Gertie sees this, she thinks. Now, I wouldn’t even remember which book it is, but isn’t this something they actually do in one of the books? Or did my mind make that up? At least in some meetings they were allowed to talk about make up without unleashing Gertie wrath...
Betty then accepts a job with Ziggy and Floortje. I thought the Dutch names where weird, but Clover and Daffodil? Really? Those are names for horses...or rabbits. (But with ‘flower children’ as parents, what’d you expect...)
To round this chapter up: Betty believes she died and went to heaven. I can’t really snark her on that. She’s home with her brother and dad, has a BSC that actually took all the good things and dumped the bad stuff, has healthy food and her beloved sunshine. I can see how everything is better over there. Suriname or California. Just stay there Betty...it’s what you end up doing anyways.
Chapter 5
..Or where Inge/Mary Anne and Joke/Claudia are to babysit the Bosman-, Timmerman- and Meersman kids (Newtons/Feldmans and Perkinses). Because apparantly the best thing you can do if three families go out is to bring together the children in one house and rent two babysitters, in stead of the kids staying at their own home and renting three babysitters. Well, I suppose it’s cheaper to hire two in stead of three, but with the pittance the BSC charges, the parents are not likely to go broke... . But well, that is the setup for this chapter.
There’s babies, little angel kids (Newtons and Perkins) and little devil spawns (Feldmans). Really, why are the Feldman kids that misbehaved. Why couldn’t Thomas/Jamie have one bad trait. Or Emmy/Myriah for that matter. She’s perfect enough, one little flaw wouldn’t kill her.
Not going to tackle the whole chapter with all the Dutch/English translating here. Too many names, too much cluttering. I’ll just ‘skimsnark’ it.
Inge and Joke had a great plan made up, involving a playground and letting the kids be energetic as hell. I’d say, never make a plan involving little kids. You’ll be lucky if you get half of what you’d planned done. But these perfect babysitters never thought of a plan B? Ha, their bad. Because ofcourse it raining. And now they’re stuck inside with eight kids, two of which are babies, three are angels, three are devils, and to top it of one of the devils hates girls and babysitters. So this must mean hell, no?
Inge decides to watch the babies, Joke can watch the other kids. They’ll switch later, or they mean to. Then there’s some condescending shit which goes “when you’re sitting for a crew, you better place yourself so that you can keep an eye on everybody at the same time. That’s one thing we learned when we ran a play group last summer. You can’t get so involved with any one kid that the whole group falls apart.” NO REALLY. NO SHIT SHERLOCK. I always though the best thing to do when watching a group was to focus on one child and let the others fight to death while not looking. I mean, these girls actually had to figure this out? Isn’t this comon sense? At least child-care basics?
Hell breaks loose at the table when Kim steals Brenda’s crayon, but ooh Inge to the rescue. “Tha’s called babysitting teamwork”, apparantly. Not common sense, no, but a very special skill only known to babysitters.
Then the girl hating Robbie suddenly is very nice to the babies in the house, which startles everyone. I’d be more worried about the fact that he cries “Blast off! Babies into Space!’ while watching a Western movie, than the fact that a boy likes babies. But that might be just me. (also: what? The BSC lets children watch TV? Oh my, I never...)
The rest of the chapter is sort of sweet: Robbie helps out with the babies, and apparantly he’s read a book called ‘Babies in Space’, which is why he knows as much about babies as he does. Well, there’s a mystery solved.
Chapter 6
Well Dawn gets to go to the beach, but Betty has to settle with the Colakreek. Which I looked up and it’s a lake in Suriname, a recreational park included. Looks rather nice. But once again there’ll be some anomalies in the chapter...
Betty leaves in her bikini, as do her friends, but Betty is the only one who has the sence to slip on a cover-up, in case something happens or she has to go into a store or such. Isn’t this also common sense? Then again, teenage girls... . Also Dennis/Jeff apparently takes his fishing gear with him, which I cannot find in writing in the us version. But I suppose taking a fishing rod to a creek is better than taking one to the beach... .
Betty does talk about a beach though, so I’m not sure if this Kreek thingy has sandy beaches or not. As a side note: I’m not fond of sandy beaches. I can survive a day on the beach, but if I can avoid it, I will. I’d rather go to a lakeside and have a grassy edge to go into and out of the water. Or even a pebblestone beach, much better than having all this wet and dry sand covering everything... . But Betty’s not me (thank you god), so she can like beaches all the wants.
Somehow ‘I ran ahead and found us a big stretch of sand’, translates into ‘ i ran ahead and found a nice place in the shadow’. Again, more fitting for the Kreek thing, and I’m a shadow girls myself (am so white, I burn like crazy, and am a Mary Anne when on the beach, so yeah, I’ll take shadow any time).
There’s also no talk of ‘the Swedish delegation to the blond convention’ or a single word about the blonde girls and the sun light and such. Now, maybe the translator did think this was an edge too far, thinking of being in the Colakreek in Suriname (where, Jessie, most of the inhabitants are black *le gasp*) to have someone say that... . But who know, the translator might also have been high as hell, and just not forgot to translate half the book.... . There’s talk of Dennis going fishing (in stead of finding clams), and chasing mountain lions...which is again a Dutch book only thing. Also, apparently the picknick mrs Bruen (mevrouw Bruin) packed included “lemona de - or soft as it is called here” (whyyy is this included if it’s not in the original?!)
Then Betty has father-daugher chat, which reads awkward as hell. Probably meant to, but that was a toe-crippling talk. But her Dad senses Betty is not happy about something and guesses right that she is lonely, sometimes. Meh, can’t really snark betty for that. But i can snark Betty’s mum and Dad, as they are totally to blame for that. Mainly Betty’s mum. Who cuts a family in two, in Heavens name? Not only cut it in two pieces, but flew (almost) halfway around the world for that matter. Different continents. Ofcourse she misses home and misses the half of her family that’s waiting for her on the other side of the world. God, parents and not thinking... Probably Shannon though: “yeah home to the Netherlands where I have plenty of weed and other drugs all day long... . Don’t care about my kids though”
I can’t blame Betty for not thinking about her mother’s feelings later that day when she speaks on the phone with her. Basically she’s raving about how fantastic everything is over here, how perfect it is and how she doesn’t even have to miss babysitting (I read: I flew halfway across the globe and I can’t even get a fucking break).
Well truly sorry you guys, I had lost my Dutch copy of this book - it wasn’t in the dozen or so places that I tend to put books or not even on one of my bookshelves. Then I stopped looking and when deep cleaning this weekend I found it behind a a cupboard in the living- I swear I’m not mrs Shafer! The usual suspects are my cat or my 4-year old boy, and I’m thinking the cat had little to do with it.... .
Chapter One
Chapter Two and Three
And back to where I left it:
Chapter 4
And if you remeber, in US books at least, and probably everywhere else, this is the Disneyland chapter. The chapter I never had. I’m soo sad. Well, when I say sad, I mean angry.
Stupid translators. I’m trying to picture how that went down, when writing book 4 and 5. Probably a few blondes and airheads together, and being from the Netherlands, probably smoking the good green stuff: “What do we do with this Sunny California Girl that suddenly comes to Steendam, how are we going to make that belieeeeeevable to our audience. Surely it’s unheard of an English girl to learn Dutch (or something to that matter)” “Oooh yeah we’ll just have to change this..., I KNOW, I know, You Guys! Let’s make her come from Suriname, that’s totally the same as the Netherlands (only, not) and then there’s no language troubles!” “But what if she ever goes back to California, what do we do then” Cue them laughing their heads of for ten minutes and going “ha! As if these books will last the year....” . Comes book 23 : “oh shit, we sure are in a pickle now. What do we do with this book. Disneyland chapter? Let’s make it up as we go along...”
Yeah, so my chapter 4 is your chapter 5. And Betty/Dawn is on her way to visit her all best friend Sunny. She could find this house with her eyes closed, apparently. I wish she’d give that a try, and promptly be run over by a Prius...
Anyway on to Sunny, who is waiting with an angisa - A Surinamian headscarfthingy. Why they felt the need to replace the word bandana - which we have and know over here - is again a strange fact. Is this to emphasize or convince us it really is Suriname here. They probably think the readers so stupid... “If we’re to use the word bandana, they’ll be on to us and know she’s actually a Californian girl! Better fog their minds and use angisa! Now they’ll never know!”
Well the reason she’s holding the bandana is to cover Betty’s eyes while awaiting the surprise. “Surprise, here a deep well I’ve dug out for you-oouu-ou -*thump*” But that does not happen, saddly.
Betty is at first not too happy when the bandana is lifted. Well, why would she, all that she can see is two girls (Julie Hendricks and Elsje Bloem) that she used to know. Not even very well, just okay. She’s all like “is this my surprise? Some surprise. I’d like the well, please”. I’d be confused too, if someone did that to me. Here’s the lame thing I’m so excited about! Be excited along with me!
Oh but ofcourse the surprise is yet to come when Sunny reveals it’s a meeting of..tada tada dum: The We Love Kids Club (we never had the little heart in our books). Apparently some of the Kool-Aid leaked out to Suriname, as these girls started their own Baby Sitting Club. Based on Betty’s letters. Because, yet again, no one else in the world is capable of coming up with this actually very basic and simple idea of a Baby Sitting Club. Gertie/Kristy has the one and only patent/copryright/rights reserved to that Great Idea. Christ.
Apparently these girls have meetings too, and distributed flyers too, and even have Kinderkoffers (Kid-Kits). So basically they copied everything of their East Coast “rivals”. O wait, not everything! They do not have officers and they don’t call back their customers to fix the appointment. Imagine that - a club meeting can be run withouth a president, vice president, ...and other bullshit functions that are not really needed. Well, maybe only the secretary bit, that can come in handy. But does Betty take this knowledge back home to Steemdam? Ofcourse not. Gertie wouldn’t believe her anyways. Or have her head for suggesting it.
Betty is also taken aback when one of the girls starts painting her nails. Imagine if Gertie sees this, she thinks. Now, I wouldn’t even remember which book it is, but isn’t this something they actually do in one of the books? Or did my mind make that up? At least in some meetings they were allowed to talk about make up without unleashing Gertie wrath...
Betty then accepts a job with Ziggy and Floortje. I thought the Dutch names where weird, but Clover and Daffodil? Really? Those are names for horses...or rabbits. (But with ‘flower children’ as parents, what’d you expect...)
To round this chapter up: Betty believes she died and went to heaven. I can’t really snark her on that. She’s home with her brother and dad, has a BSC that actually took all the good things and dumped the bad stuff, has healthy food and her beloved sunshine. I can see how everything is better over there. Suriname or California. Just stay there Betty...it’s what you end up doing anyways.
Chapter 5
..Or where Inge/Mary Anne and Joke/Claudia are to babysit the Bosman-, Timmerman- and Meersman kids (Newtons/Feldmans and Perkinses). Because apparantly the best thing you can do if three families go out is to bring together the children in one house and rent two babysitters, in stead of the kids staying at their own home and renting three babysitters. Well, I suppose it’s cheaper to hire two in stead of three, but with the pittance the BSC charges, the parents are not likely to go broke... . But well, that is the setup for this chapter.
There’s babies, little angel kids (Newtons and Perkins) and little devil spawns (Feldmans). Really, why are the Feldman kids that misbehaved. Why couldn’t Thomas/Jamie have one bad trait. Or Emmy/Myriah for that matter. She’s perfect enough, one little flaw wouldn’t kill her.
Not going to tackle the whole chapter with all the Dutch/English translating here. Too many names, too much cluttering. I’ll just ‘skimsnark’ it.
Inge and Joke had a great plan made up, involving a playground and letting the kids be energetic as hell. I’d say, never make a plan involving little kids. You’ll be lucky if you get half of what you’d planned done. But these perfect babysitters never thought of a plan B? Ha, their bad. Because ofcourse it raining. And now they’re stuck inside with eight kids, two of which are babies, three are angels, three are devils, and to top it of one of the devils hates girls and babysitters. So this must mean hell, no?
Inge decides to watch the babies, Joke can watch the other kids. They’ll switch later, or they mean to. Then there’s some condescending shit which goes “when you’re sitting for a crew, you better place yourself so that you can keep an eye on everybody at the same time. That’s one thing we learned when we ran a play group last summer. You can’t get so involved with any one kid that the whole group falls apart.” NO REALLY. NO SHIT SHERLOCK. I always though the best thing to do when watching a group was to focus on one child and let the others fight to death while not looking. I mean, these girls actually had to figure this out? Isn’t this comon sense? At least child-care basics?
Hell breaks loose at the table when Kim steals Brenda’s crayon, but ooh Inge to the rescue. “Tha’s called babysitting teamwork”, apparantly. Not common sense, no, but a very special skill only known to babysitters.
Then the girl hating Robbie suddenly is very nice to the babies in the house, which startles everyone. I’d be more worried about the fact that he cries “Blast off! Babies into Space!’ while watching a Western movie, than the fact that a boy likes babies. But that might be just me. (also: what? The BSC lets children watch TV? Oh my, I never...)
The rest of the chapter is sort of sweet: Robbie helps out with the babies, and apparantly he’s read a book called ‘Babies in Space’, which is why he knows as much about babies as he does. Well, there’s a mystery solved.
Chapter 6
Well Dawn gets to go to the beach, but Betty has to settle with the Colakreek. Which I looked up and it’s a lake in Suriname, a recreational park included. Looks rather nice. But once again there’ll be some anomalies in the chapter...
Betty leaves in her bikini, as do her friends, but Betty is the only one who has the sence to slip on a cover-up, in case something happens or she has to go into a store or such. Isn’t this also common sense? Then again, teenage girls... . Also Dennis/Jeff apparently takes his fishing gear with him, which I cannot find in writing in the us version. But I suppose taking a fishing rod to a creek is better than taking one to the beach... .
Betty does talk about a beach though, so I’m not sure if this Kreek thingy has sandy beaches or not. As a side note: I’m not fond of sandy beaches. I can survive a day on the beach, but if I can avoid it, I will. I’d rather go to a lakeside and have a grassy edge to go into and out of the water. Or even a pebblestone beach, much better than having all this wet and dry sand covering everything... . But Betty’s not me (thank you god), so she can like beaches all the wants.
Somehow ‘I ran ahead and found us a big stretch of sand’, translates into ‘ i ran ahead and found a nice place in the shadow’. Again, more fitting for the Kreek thing, and I’m a shadow girls myself (am so white, I burn like crazy, and am a Mary Anne when on the beach, so yeah, I’ll take shadow any time).
There’s also no talk of ‘the Swedish delegation to the blond convention’ or a single word about the blonde girls and the sun light and such. Now, maybe the translator did think this was an edge too far, thinking of being in the Colakreek in Suriname (where, Jessie, most of the inhabitants are black *le gasp*) to have someone say that... . But who know, the translator might also have been high as hell, and just not forgot to translate half the book.... . There’s talk of Dennis going fishing (in stead of finding clams), and chasing mountain lions...which is again a Dutch book only thing. Also, apparently the picknick mrs Bruen (mevrouw Bruin) packed included “lemona de - or soft as it is called here” (whyyy is this included if it’s not in the original?!)
Then Betty has father-daugher chat, which reads awkward as hell. Probably meant to, but that was a toe-crippling talk. But her Dad senses Betty is not happy about something and guesses right that she is lonely, sometimes. Meh, can’t really snark betty for that. But i can snark Betty’s mum and Dad, as they are totally to blame for that. Mainly Betty’s mum. Who cuts a family in two, in Heavens name? Not only cut it in two pieces, but flew (almost) halfway around the world for that matter. Different continents. Ofcourse she misses home and misses the half of her family that’s waiting for her on the other side of the world. God, parents and not thinking... Probably Shannon though: “yeah home to the Netherlands where I have plenty of weed and other drugs all day long... . Don’t care about my kids though”
I can’t blame Betty for not thinking about her mother’s feelings later that day when she speaks on the phone with her. Basically she’s raving about how fantastic everything is over here, how perfect it is and how she doesn’t even have to miss babysitting (I read: I flew halfway across the globe and I can’t even get a fucking break).