The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood Las alegres aventuras de Robin Hood

A learner adaptation, not the original: MovaReader retold Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, which came out in 1883 with Pyle’s own illustrations, in simple Spanish. The language and length have changed: simple Spanish in the past tenses, 10 words per sentence on average, 10 chapters and about 5,500 words, while Pyle’s English book has more than twenty chapters and is roughly twenty times longer. The main episodes stay, in Pyle’s order: the shot at the king’s deer and Robin’s flight into Sherwood, the staff fight with Little John on the bridge, the Sheriff’s shooting match with the golden arrow, Allan a Dale, Friar Tuck at the river, the wedding in the village church, Sir Richard of the Lea and his debt, and King Richard’s visit to the forest. The retelling ends with King Richard’s visit to Sherwood; Robin’s later years and his death, told in Pyle’s last chapters, are not retold, and many smaller adventures are left out. The English text is free on Project Gutenberg, the source the retelling follows. The complete original is not in the catalog.

There is no audio version of this adaptation: MovaReader gives you the text, which you read on screen, and a tap on an unfamiliar word shows its translation next to it. Here that will mostly be words of the forest and the road, such as cuerno, flecha or fraile.

The Reader plan translates whole sentences. Here they are short, 10 words on average, so you will seldom need one translated: mostly Robin’s jokes and sayings, like el color de nuez no sale tan rápido del pelo rubio, and short lines that carry a feeling, like Mi mano fue muy rápida, pero ahora mi corazón llora. The free plan also translates single words, up to a daily limit.

The whole adaptation takes 1-2 hours at the pace of someone who still translates new words. A chapter averages about 545 words, or 5-9 minutes of reading, so one evening easily covers several chapters or even the whole book.

The difficulty is fairly even: the 10 chapters average 9-11 words per sentence, so there is no hard stretch. The lightest are V, “Fray Tuck”, and X, “El golpe del rey”, at about 9 words per sentence, because they are mostly quick dialogue; the longest sentences are in III, “La flecha de oro”, and VI, “La boda de Ellen”, at about 11.

Yes, once you sign in: the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so next time you carry on from there. The contents on this page also take you straight to any chapter, say VIII, “La deuda de sir Richard”, where the sorrowful knight goes to the priory on the day his debt falls due.