Asi of you put when you come to request fiao… asi of you put when of collection!
Uhh, no, that doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me either, but it’s the best that BabelFish and its various online colleagues tend to come up with.
The original Spanish:
Asi de pones cuando vienes a pedir fiao…asi de pones cuando de cobro!
It’s the caption to a two-panel cartoon. The first panel shows a weepy-looking angel on his knees, with halo, praying; the second panel shows an angry-looking devil stomping around looking significantly annoyed.
I’m guessing it is something along the lines of “You’re a good Christian when you want something from <religion, God, the church, etc> but when it comes time to put money in the collection plate you’re on the side of the devil”, but my Spanish is totally not up to the task.
I don’t know “fiao,” but if my high school spanish doesn’t fail me, it says something like “This is how you look when you come to ask for " fiao” [forgiveness?]; this is how you look when you have to pay for it/when you are charged for it." But I could totally be wrong.
Pedir fiao = pedir fiado = “buy on credit”. So: Asi te pones cuando vienes a pedir fiao = “This is how you put yourself when you come to pay by credit.”
Cobro = first person of cobrar, “to charge”. So: Asi te pones cuando te cobro. = “This is how you put yourself when I charge you!”
The above was an overly literal translation, though.
As JRDelirious’s post indicates, in this context poner (actually, ponerse) does not mean “to put,” but “to become” or “to get” (in the sense of act).
There would seem to be an error in the original quoted, since I think “de” should be “te” in all three instances, indicating a reflexive usage in the first two instances and an indirect object pronoun in the third. A native speaker may correct me if I am wrong.
Cool! OK, so it isn’t “churchy” at all, but is rather the loose equivalent of those signs you see sometimes at cash registers that say “In God We Trust; all others pay cash”.
That makes more sense. I couldn’t figure out why a deli counter would have what looked like a pushy homily about folks who act sanctimonious but don’t put money in the collection plate!
Most of the Spanishfolk here are Caribbean-flavored, although there are more Mexican people than there used to be.