Animal Expressions 2

Sea Animals 

Charlie is academically very bright and believes that the world is his oyster following a first class honours degree in International Law at Cambridge University. He also had a whale of time, particularly with the famous Footlights Theatre Group, where he performed a number of Shakespeare plays in theatres in and around Cambridge. After the performances they would all drink like a fish and order pint after pint of bitter.

This has been a difficult week for Charlie for two reasons. Firstly, his least favourite Aaunt has been staying in his flat for over a week. Eventually, he had the idea of a red herring to get his aunt to leave in subtle way by asking his next-door neighbour to mention there was a serious cockroach problem that would affect his flat soon. Amazingly, his plan worked as his aunt left after lunch.

The second problem is that Charlie was very miserable after splitting up with his girlfriend, Suzie. However, his older sister, Fiona, helped him to forget her by convincing him that there’s plenty of fish in the sea. He agreed and replied that he would be able to survive without Susie. Besides, he had better bigger fish to fry, at this point of his life, like getting a job with a large multinational company to pay his overdraft. 

Below are the Spanish equivalents for some of the expressions cited above:

Sea Animal Expressions	Spanish Translation	Literal Translation
the world is his oyster	tiene el mundo a sus pies	world = mundo oyster = ostra
to have a whale of a time	pasárselo bomba	whale = ballena
to drinks like a fish	beber como un cosaco	fish = pez
a red herring	pista falsa, señuelo	herring = arenque
There’s plenty of fish in the sea	hay mucho donde elegir	plenty = mucho sea = mar
to have better bigger fish to fry	tener cosas más importantes que hacer	to fry = freír