Translation examples
noun
Al, what kind of numskull would hide shoes in a shoe store?
Al, ¿qué tipo de zoquete escondía zapatos en una tienda de zapatos?
Take those binoculars and cover your side, numskull,
¡Coge estos prismáticos y cubre tu lado, zoquete!
He was deeply ashamed when we children heard our mother shout in her anguish that he was a numskull unable even to decipher a street name or bus sign.
Le avergonzaba profundamente que nosotros, niños, oyéramos a nuestra madre gritar de angustia que era un zoquete incapaz de descifrar el nombre de una calle o el número del autobús.
It was astonishing that that gentle, archaic redhead, all steeped in the rural slumber in which his locality dozed, that numskull whom I had sadly pummeled, was henceforth part of the winged cohort, endowed with a body of thick air.
Era asombroso que ese pelirrojito tranquilo y arcaico, lleno del sueño rural en que dormía su aldea, ese zoquete al que tristemente había dado de coscorrones, ahora fuera parte de la cohorte alada, estuviera dotado de un cuerpo de aire espeso.
Difficult because the Princeton undergraduate program was one of the oldest in the country, which meant he could have earned academic credit for doing what he was already doing, that is, have been rewarded for the privilege of forging on with his book, which in turn meant his course load would have been effectively lightened by one course each semester, which would have given him more time not only to write but to read, to watch films, to listen to music, to drink, to pursue girls, and to go to New York, but Ferguson was opposed to the teaching of creative writing on principle, for he was convinced that fiction writing was not a subject that could be taught, that every future writer had to learn how to do it on his or her own, and furthermore, based on the information he had been given about how those so-called workshops were run (the word inevitably made him think of a roomful of young apprentices sawing through wooden planks and hammering nails into boards), the students were encouraged to comment on one another’s work, which struck him as absurd (the blind leading the blind!), and why would he ever submit to having his work picked apart by a numskull undergraduate, his exceptionally bizarre and unclassifiable work, which would surely be frowned upon and dismissed as experimental rubbish.
Difícil porque el programa de estudios de Princeton era uno de los más antiguos del país, lo que significaba que podría haber adquirido créditos académicos por hacer lo que ya estaba haciendo, es decir, ser premiado por el privilegio de seguir adelante con su libro, lo que a su vez significaba que la carga de los estudios se habría aligerado con una asignatura menos cada semestre, lo que le proporcionaría más tiempo no sólo para escribir sino para leer, ver cine, escuchar música, beber, andar con chicas e ir a Nueva York, pero en principio Ferguson se oponía a los cursos de escritura creativa, porque estaba convencido de que escribir ficción no era una materia que pudiera enseñarse, que todo futuro escritor tenía que aprender a hacerlo por sí solo, y además, basándose en la información que le habían dado sobre cómo se llevaban aquellos llamados talleres (palabra que inevitablemente le hacía pensar en una estancia llena de jóvenes aprendices aserrando tablones y clavando tablas), en donde se animaba a los estudiantes a comentar el trabajo de sus compañeros, cosa que él encontraba absurda (¡el ciego conduciendo a los ciegos!), y por qué iba a pasar él por el trance de que algún zoquete compañero suyo echara por tierra su trabajo, su obra sumamente extraña e inclasificable, que seguramente considerarían con el ceño fruncido despachándola como basura experimental.
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