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Old 01-07-2019, 01:44 AM   #46
Icelander
 
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Re: Spanish Name for 'Keepers of the Last Flame'?

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Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
If there are any Spanish-speakers reading, what would you use as the Spanish title of an organization whose name ought to translate into something like 'Keepers of the Last Flame'?

The connotations should be those of a small campfire in the wilderness, being kept alive against the encroaching darkness all around. The last refuge of warmth and light in an ocean of blackness.

The name and the general sense ought to evoke the phrase from Dylan Thoma's poem and the title of the G.R.R. Martin story, 'The Dying of the Light'. A sense of melancholy inevitability, of cosmological finality, made bitterweet by the contrast between the outer darkness and the warm, homely refuge, where the comfort and camraderie are, however, by the nature of things, doomed to fade away in the end.
Google Translate suggests something like "Guardianes de la última llama", which my decades-forgotten high school Spanish says sounds plausible, but I don't know if it's the exact name that I want. I want a word for 'fire' or 'flame' that evokes images of warmth, comfort and safety, as opposed to a fire that burns and destroys. And maybe a more exotic and ambiguous word for 'Keepers', one that might be interpreted to mean 'Guardians' but might also be translated as 'controllers' or 'holders', i.e. someone who not only guards the campfire, but controls who might have access to it.

If the exact dialect matters, this name should have emerged from a social group containing speakers of Chilean Spanish in respected leadership roles, but with the majority in terms of numbers consisting of speakers of Andean Spanish. Some among the leadership would have some connections to the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, but that might not include having been born there and technically, they might have almost any Chilean or even Argentinian accent.

And yes, there would be people involved who are not native Spanish speakers at all, but at the moment, I'm concerned with what a specific group of people who are Spanish speakers would call their movement.

Actually, I'd also welcome suggestions for a Brazilian Portuguese variation of the name, one applied by Paulistano speakers of mostly low economic and social standing, and, crucially, who knew the organisation only from the outside, as a terrifying partner and ally, but had only heard the Spanish-speakers refer to their organisation at all in oblique snippets and mysterious code. They'd very likely refer to them as something connected to flame, hearth or embers, though, ironically, another possibility is a name connected to frost and ice, though it's also possible that they'd dub them something from South American mythology.
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Last edited by Icelander; 01-07-2019 at 01:48 AM.
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