EDITORIAL - Tagalog error in Coke superbowl ad

The Coca-Cola advertisement aired from New York in last week's 48th Superbowl -- won by the Seattle Seahawks over the Denver Broncos -- had drawn mixed reactions that continue to simmer even today. Those who praised the ad saw it correctly for what it was, a paean to American strength in diversity.

Those who criticized it either missed the point entirely or, worse, gave vent to long-held and unexpressed bigotry. To have one and the same patriotic song sung in the eight biggest languages spoken in America today is not divisiveness. It is unity. Coca-Cola could not have been more correct in concept.

If the song has to be criticized at all, especially by Filipinos, some of whom were sadly among the most uninformed of the online critics, it is in the grossly erroneous and embarrassing interpretation of the Tagalog line in the song.

The line in question is "Above the fruited plain" from the stanza that goes "O beautiful for spacious skies/For amber waves of grain/For purple mountain majesties/Above the fruited plain" in the song "America the Beautiful."

According to most interpretations, the line "Above the fruited plain" means or refers to the immediately preceding line "For purple mountain majesties" which tower (above) the lush and fertile (fruited) plain.

Alas for the Tagalog interpreter (and for the Filipino nation in general) his or her best take on the line "Above the fruited plain" in Tagalog was "Sa ibabaw ng mga prutas." Susmaryosep! How literal can anyone get, to the point that it deprives the entire beautiful stanza of any sense.

"Sa ibabaw ng mga prutas?" Why, any Grade One pupil tasked to translate that line into English will quickly come up with "On top of the fruits" and not "Above the fruited plain" or its more precise and more appropriate meaning, which is "above the lush and fertile plain."

The key words here are "fruited" in the original line and "fertile" as how it is to be interpreted. Fruited means fertile and refers to abundance, of the earth and its natural bounties, the fruits of creation for which America is so blessed, and hence so beautiful. Sa ibabaw ng prutas, langaw lang ang nandiyan.