Translation, a Market in Crisis? Article by Danilo Nogueira at the latest edition of Translation Journal.

Then we went to the park...





where the grass is as green as it has always been.

Café com Leite. "In the United States if you are not quite white, then you are black. But in Brazil, if you are not quite black, then you are white."

The English Invasion. The article below comes from the Economist print edition. While there is nothing terribly new about the author's view, it's interesting for the number of examples drawn from different languages.

THE ENGLISH INVASION

English, a mongrel language itself, has spread its genes worldwide. But does this mean that other languages are doomed?

WHO are i leader no global? Bosses who say no to everything? Not even that concession to its own syntax does the Italian language make: no, they head the anti-globalisation movement. And that's in the Corriere della Sera, a Milan newspaper of much solemnity. Such is the ruthless onset of the English language. It is an utter mongrel itself, born of Latin, Greek, German, French and more, plus sundry ex-imperial spatterings. But just take a shufti or a dekko—a look, as British soldiers learned in Egypt and India respectively—at the way the mongrel is biting back.

Witness the Corriere's report of one anti smog day, when only odd-numbered cars could move on parts of the historic Via Emilia. But if you dared to risk the raid along it (a word imported via France, as in le raid Paris-Dakar), no need to dribblare like a footballer to avoid the checkpoints—lo stop was pretty random. Not for lack of performance: small towns were excused. Even so, imagine the chaos if a smash had put the—open-to-all—freeway paralleling the historic road in tilt (roughly, a seizure, as in pre-electronic arcade games).

The same issue reported a Cartier opening where the star was greeted by i clacson of cars, i flash of photographers and the applause of i fan. Plus a Dior show—and fashion at least is French, surely? It is not. Hard models, a bit drag queen, but the cut was soft. Then to a rival show, where i top, trench-bustier, body and short were a trifle porno shop. And finally to a super cocktail.

The language of Dante is not alone. On one page in November the Amsterdam De Telegraaf used spam, junkmail, mailbox, software, filters and downloaden; recorded that a rockdiva had a baby, a nieuw album (“Graduated Fool”) and a single destined to become een grote hit; and reported police surveillanceteams watching errant cars—a stationwagon, maybe—with a videocamera (but no radar, since some motorists use a radardetector). Since the 1860s, not just 1945, Japanese has adopted and adapted countless English words. German perhaps outdoes all in its readiness to be invaded: over 30 years ago, a dictionary could list 3,000 recent arrivals from abroad.

And France, whose officials are so keen to protect its tongue from “Anglo-Saxon” pollution, and whose citizens, at least the young ones, barely give a damn? Oddly, both groups may be right. French was never in fact the staid language of Racine or the Académie française. From the days of Villon, some of whose poems, in 15th-century slang, are now a conundrum even to scholars, it has constantly reinvented itself. Like English, it has also absorbed foreign words: the French stay in Algeria left it slang like bled, a village, or toubib, a doctor. Nor has it merely taken in English words but—just as English did in past centuries with French—has transformed their meaning, indeed has invented English-sounding words that English never knew: shakehand (although, curiously, Melanesian pidgin English has sekan, an agreement), talkie-walkie, recordman, rugbyman and other such (though the tram-driving wattman is from Belgium, dressman is a Danish male model and poleman, the one in pole position, seems to have been born in India).

The -ing words of English, for some reason, are especially favoured for adoption. Among the oldest (three centuries or so) clearly English words attested in French are pudding (though it may itself come from the French boudin), redingote, riding-coat and (though this was never naturalised) boulingrin, a bowling green. Many more -ings have recently arrived, nearly all as nouns. Le shopping is pure English. Others are close to the English verb: un lifting, a face-lift, or le pushing, which (in Quebec) is influence or pull. But some are at one remove: un dancing, parking or camping are places where you do those things. And un lashing is further off still—not flagellation but what beauticians do to your eyelashes.

The –ing family has not moved only into French. A smoking, a dinner jacket, is so over most of Europe, Sweden and Russia included. A living is a living-room in French and Spanish; French has listing, Spanish listin, for, simply, a list.

But meanings can vary. In French, pressing is a dry-cleaner's shop; in German, tackling, as at football; in Italian, putting pressure. Footing can mean a long trek in French, but also a stroll (which in Italian can be trekking); or, in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, it can also mean jogging, though it has now largely given way to jogging itself (which in Belgian French can mean a tracksuit, which in turn, in both French and Hebrew, can be a training). And at one time in Brazilian Portuguese, footing could be the evening walk round the town square, where the young men and women eyed each other up.

So maybe French need not really fear the Anglo-Saxon -ings. But what of newer arrivals like lister, to list, crasher, to crash—as of (but by now not only of) the office systems? Or badger, to use an electronic identity badge? Or the bar that demands looké clothing of its customers? Humph.

Nor, since the 18th century, has French really hit back. The arrival of British media at the European Union has exported a few French idioms to English—“reticent” for “reluctant”, “in the margins of the meeting” or “running into the sand”—but these are new uses, or abuses, of existing English words. L'informatique, a neat umbrella for the whole field of “computing”, “information technology” and the like, did not catch on in its English form, “informatics”. One of the few true new exports is the change on the fascia of the place where Britons now buy foreign currency, but even that is unknown to ordinary text or speech.

Perhaps French should have done as Spanish and Portuguese have, ruthlessly adapting English words to their own orthography. You might guess a listin, even a mitin, a meeting (and Chileans reverse the process with a walking closet, a cupboard you can walk in to). But would you spot bluyins—blue jeans? The Peruvian guachiman (and his wife, the guachimana) guarding your house, maybe. But the hitchhiker's ride, a raid, perhaps with the driver of a picape? Or the Portuguese queque, a little cake? And what is a Cuban's jonron? A home run at beisbol—two of many sports terms that have gone worldwide: you may suffer a nocaute if you deride the gol scored by the favourite time of some Brazilian football fã, unless, being a slang-speaking Italian, you deflect trouble at the last moment and are salvato in corner.

In contrast, if French purists want evidence, they can point to the dire results of German complacency: brunchen, clicken, faken, fighten, flippen, jobben (to work part-time), mobben, outen, shoppen and many more. Still, even such horrors are at least inflected German-style. Thus the staff may think they can relaxen, the boss having been gekidnappt, but not so once the management has braingestormt a bit.

And German, like French, has readily reinvented English for its own use. In sport, for example. From tennis's Tie-Break and Match-Point, German only in their capital letters, it was a short step to Longline (the tramlines), Volleystop (a drop shot) and Volleycross (a cross-court volley). German women, like Italian, French or some Latin American ones, can buy a Body (-stocking, or maybe a leotard) while their boyfriends haggle over an Oldtimer, an old car. And then to remake contact with a call on the Handy, the mobile phone.

The power of technology

That universal modern toy is strangely un-universal in its name. “TV” and “video” have conquered most of the world, not so the short and easy “mobile”. To the Dutch too it is a handy; to Indonesians a handphone (for them, a mobil is a car), to Israelis a pelephone, to the French a portable, to Spanish-speakers a celular, to Swedes a yuppienalle, the yuppie's teddy bear. And to Americans it is a cellphone.

Yet technology habitually spreads language. In the past, English imported “cotton” from Arabic, via Spain; “tussore” began as the Hindustani word for a shuttle. Many English seafarers' words are borrowed from Dutch. Likewise in later centuries British or American technology often took its English name abroad.

“Cement” became Shanghai's word for any street paving, asphalt included; a Gulf mechanic fixes your car with ispannerat. The xerox has spread to Spanish, Portuguese and Russian, to go no further; not to France or Germany, but the document may be faxé or gefaxt. These days it is informatics that spreads the words: an Italian may cliccare or sciftare at his keyboard, and, for all the efforts of officials, Frenchmen get their news off le web, and send it via an e-mail as much as by (delightful hybrid) un mel. Turks send a simple mail. And the Japanese—typically of their Procrustean way with foreign words—use a pasucon, a personal computer, for their masu-komi, mass communications. And if the (widely adopted) software goes wrong, get an Israeli ledabeg, to debug it.

Xerox typifies a wide range of proper names which (as often in English) have become generic. A voksal, as in Vauxhall, a district of London, is a Russian station. Via Indian English, a stepney, a spare wheel, so named after the firm that supplied them, joined Indian vernaculars—and, disguised as an estepe, the Portuguese of Brazil. Brazil also got a hollerite for a pay-cheque, and a bonde for the old trams of Rio, from the British firm that built them. Its citizens, when jogging, are doing cooper, from an American doctor who recommended it; or they may drive a jipe (as do many others, in various spellings), while the native Portuguese lounge in a maples, an armchair, as sold in that London furniture shop.

To Koreans a stapler is a hochikisu, a trenchcoat a babari. To Filipinos (whose Tagalog gave us “the boondocks”), toothpaste is colgate and any video-recorder a betamax. A Pole's bicycle is his rover, a former British maker; for like reasons, the chainguard of a French or Italian motorbike is a carter. A French electrician binds bare wires with chatterton, though he will scotcher a parcel, while Spanish-speakers use cinta escoch, though that tape in Brazil is durex (which in turn in Mexico is socks, in Ecuador a cooking stove). And the vast migrant jargon of management-speak and finance has produced one local and short-lived jewel: at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, 1990s French-speaking regulators learned to cooker a bank's assets—not fudge them, but weight them according to rules set out by a committee chaired by a certain Peter Cooke.

A serious question

There are many more oddities. Why did the land of Odysseus need to transcribe “ferryboat” into Greek script? Was it rowing that gave Czech its common greeting, ahoj? Why did Hungarian pick on farmer for jeans? Why did Finnish slang, adopting skidi for a child and biisi for a piece of music, reshape the English originals with sounds—the initial sk- and the b—that are unknown to Finland's native tongue? Did Russian really have to hire a killer to murder one's business rivals? Perhaps some polymath can tell us. And there is a serious side to all these curiosities. Is it true, as many believe and fear, that adopting English vocabulary is death to other languages? It didn't kill English.

"Folktales are real," wrote Italo Calvino in the preface to his Italian Folktales. "Taken together, they offer a general explanation of life preserved in the slow ripening of rustic consciences; folk stories are the catalog of potential destinies of men and women, especially for that stage in life when destiny is formed, i.e., youth-beginning with birth, which itself often foreshadows the future; then the departure from home, and finally, through the trials of growing up the attainment of maturity."

some folktales from around the world.

Gender in Translation. Extremely interesting.

The Music of Language. "Apart from England, I think the only country in the world which truly loves and understands Wodehouse is India. It seems bizarre, but there’s something illuminating in that. Indian English is passionately in love with English grammar at its most formal; in the commuter trains of Bombay, the subjunctive and the gerund still thrive in ordinary speech. It loves, too, the vivid and racy idiom in un-English contexts; a sober report of a murder case in the Indian press may suddenly swerve into the comment that the police hope soon to ‘nab the culprit’. Wodehouse’s world may seem very far from contemporary Indian life, but that sensitivity to idiom and to the music of grammar are exactly what is so wonderful about him. He is, apart from everything else, a grammarian of genius." (Read more)

via wood's lot

Great site for Portuguese lovers and learners.

Tout a commencé à Nuremberg. An overview of the birth of simultaneous interpreting and a personal account.

Advertising Slogan-Generator. Blame it on the brand name evaluations I was doing this morning. They must have put my mind in a marketingese slant.

You'll never put a better bit of Enigmatic Mermaid on your knife
Avez-vous une Enigmatic Mermaid?
It's the Bright One, it's the Right One, that's Enigmatic Mermaid.
The Best Part of Waking Up is Enigmatic Mermaid in Your Cup.
Prolongs Sexual Activity. Enigmatic Mermaid.
Ho Ho Ho, Green Enigmatic Mermaid

Ho ho ho, I guess I am now ready to do my Christmas shopping.

Gerundism-Haters Unite. Brazilian Portuguese has been infected with the gerundism microbe. Take a stand and join the demoralization campaign.

I'm sure readers will like to know that the amazing and fantabulous Plep is posting again after his trip to South Africa. Maybe he will agree that there are more than 6 reasons to love Africa? Girl Hacker also has some great links for serendipitious minds. Nothing can beat this collection of stewardess uniforms from around the world.

Liga 1. Snatched from Liga1, a weblog on localization, internationalisation and globalisation.

I am simply amazed by the fact that the following options appear in country select boxes on many websites.
- Bouvet Island.
- Heard & McDonald islands.
Why? Because they are uninhabited.

And while we're at it, read about the interesting origins of the abbreviation i18n. And this i18n guy is hot stuff. Also listed on the site Microsoft's approach to "Universal" or "Neutral" Spanish and User Interfaces for Bidirectional Languages such as Hebrew and Arabic. If you're interested in internationalization, check out also the i18n gurus directory.

Seamus Heaney celebrates the life and work of Scots Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean

Emergence of Meaning and Cross-Cultural Translation in Vladimir Nabokov’s Translation and Commentary of Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin

Nabokov’s selftranslations: interpretation problems and solutions in Lolita’s Russian version

Língua Brasileira. Here is a delightful crônica on the regional differences of Brazilian Portuguese. The author is musician Kledir Ramil, from whose pen also comes A República das Bergamotas, a small essay on the gaucho way of living and speaking.

"Outro dia encontrei um mandinho, um guri desses que andam pela rua sem carpim, de bragueta aberta, soltando pandorga. Eu vinha de bici, descendo a lomba pra ir na lancheria comprar umas bergamotas..."

Se você não é gaúcho, provavelmente não entendeu nada do que eu estava contando. No Rio Grande do Sul a gente chama tangerina de bergamota e carne moída de guisado. Bidê, que a maioria usa no banheiro é o nome que nós demos para a mesinha de cabeceira, que em alguns lugares chamam de criado mudo. E por aí vai. A privada nós chamamos de patente. Dizem que começou com a chegada dos primeiros vasos sanitários de louça, vindos da Inglaterra, que traziam impresso "Patent" número tal. E pegou.

Ir aos pés no RS é fazer cocô. Eu acho tri elegante, poético. "Com licença, vou aos pés e já volto". Uma amiga carioca foi passear em Porto Alegre e precisou de um médico. A primeira coisa que ele perguntou foi: "Vais aos pés normalmente, minha filha?" Ela na mesma hora levantou e começou a fazer flexão.

O Brasil tem dessas coisas, é um país maravilhoso, com o português como língua oficial, mas cheio de dialetos diferentes.

No Rio é "e aí merrmão! CB, sangue bom! Vai rolá umach paradach". Até eu entender que merrmão era "meu irmão" levou um tempo. Em São Paulo eles botam um "i" a mais na frente do "n": "ôrra meu! Tô por deintro, mas não tô inteindeindo". E no interiorrr falam um erre todo enrolado: "a Ferrrnanda marrrcô a porrrteira". Dá um nó na língua. A vantagem é que a pronúncia deles no inglês é ótima.

Em Mins, quer dizer em Minas, eles engolem letras e falam Belzonte, Nossenhora e qualquer objeto é chamado de trem. Lembrei daquela historia do mineirinho na plataforma da estação. Quando ouviu um apito, falou apontando as malas: "Muié, pega os trem que o bicho tá vindo".

No nordeste é tudo meu rei, bichinho, ó xente. Pai é painho, mãe é mainha, vó é vóinha. E pra você conseguir falar com o acento típico da região, é só cantar sempre a primeira sílaba de qualquer palavra numa nota mais aguda que as seguintes.

Mas o lugar mais curioso de todos é Florianópolis. Lagartixa eles chamam de crocodilinho de parede. Helicóptero é avião de rosca (que deve ser lido rôchca). Carne moída é boi ralado. Se você quiser um pastel de carne precisa pedir um envelope de boi ralado. Telefone público, o popular orelhão, é conhecido como poste de prosa e a ficha de telefone é pastilha de prosa. Ôvo eles chamam de semente de galinha e motel é lugar de instantinho. E tem mais..."BRIÓI" é como chamam a BR-101. E a pronúncia correta de d+e é "di" mesmo e não "dji" como a gente fala. Também t+i é "ti" e não "tchi". Dizem que vem da colonização açoriana, mas eu acho que essa pronúncia vem sendo potencializada pela influência do castelhano, com a invasão de argentinos no litoral catarinense sempre que chega o verão. Alguma coisa eles devem deixar, além do lixo na praia.

Em Porto Alegre, uma empresa tentou lançar um serviço de entrega a domicílio de comida chinesa, o Tele China. Só que um dos significados de china no RS é prostituta. Claro que não deu certo. Imagina a confusão, um cara pede uma loira às 2 da manhã e recebe a sugestão de Frango Xadrez com Rolinho Primavera. Banana Caramelada! O que é que o cara vai querer com uma Banana
Caramelada no meio da madrugada? Tudo isso é muito engraçado, mas às vezes dá problema sério.

A primeira vez que minha mãe foi ao Rio de Janeiro, entrou numa padaria e pediu: "Me dá um cacete!!!". Cacete pra nós é pão francês. O padeiro caiu na risada, chamou ela num canto e tentou contornar a situação. Ela ingenuamente
emendou:- "Mas o senhor não tem pelo menos um cacetinho?"

Literary Translation Theory in Brazil. Hail, Campos Brothers. A paper in English by John Milton, from the English Language Department of USP. Seriously, John Milton.

The Art of Translation. Polyglut points readers to Vladimir Nabokov's famous essay . Compare with the some thoughts on the Translation Trade on the Internet Age to keep a balanced perspective. And since we're on the topic of seminal essays, here's Jorge Luis Borges on the Problems of Translating, stolen from the ProZ discussion forums.

PROBLEMAS DE LA TRADUCCIÓN
EL OFICIO DE TRADUCIR


¿La Traducción según los géneros? Tomemos la poesía, por ejemplo. Mi traducción de Whitman no es un modelo afortunado porque Whitman es un caso excepcional: es uno de los padres del verso libre. Por más que siempre se pierdan muchas cosas, traducir verso libre es mucho más fácil que traducir verso rimado.

La traducción de poesía, en el caso de Fitzgerald, o en el de Omar Khayyam, por ejemplo, es posible porque se puede recrear la obra, tomar el texto como pretexto. Otra forma de traducción, creo que es imposible, sobre todo si se piensa que dentro de un mismo idioma la traducción es imposible. Shakespeare es intraducible a otro inglés que no sea el suyo. Imaginemos una traducción literal de un verso de Darío: “La princesa está pálida en su silla de oro” es literalmente igual a ”En su silla de oro está pálida la princesa”. En el primer caso el verso es muy lindo ¿no?, por lo menos para los fines musicales que él busca. Su traducción literal, en cambio, no es nada, no existe.

La prueba de que la prosa sí puede traducirse está en el hecho de que todo el mundo está de acuerdo en que el Quijote es una gran novela y, sin embargo, como lo hizo notar Groussac, los mayores elogios han sido hechos por personas que leyeron esa obra traducida. También todos estamos de acuerdo en que Tolstoi o Dickens fueron grandes novelistas y no todos sabemos inglés y casi nadie sabe ruso.


¿Existen lenguas más o menos adecuadas para la traducción? Las lenguas germánicas, el alemán, el inglés, las lenguas escandinavas o el holandés tienen una facilidad que no tiene el español: la de las palabras compuestas.

En Shakespeare, por ejemplo: “From this worl-weary flesh” sería en español: “De esta carne cansada del mundo”. “Cansada del mundo” es una frase pesada en español, mientras que la palabra compuesta “world-weary” no lo es en inglés. Estos defectos tienen que perderse en una traducción. Imaginemos una expresión muy común en español: “estaba sentadita”. Eso no puede decirse en otros idiomas. Ahí, “sentadita”, da la idea de una chica sentada y al mismo tiempo abandonada ¿no?, bueno, “solita”. Tanto en inglés, como en francés, hay que buscar una variante. En inglés puede decirse “all alone”, que literalmente es “toda sola”.


¿Qué recomendaciones se le pueden hacer a los traductores de prosa? Desde luego que no deben ser literales. Hubo una polémica famosa en Inglaterra entre Arnold y Newman sobre la traducción literal. Arnold decía que la traducción literal no es fiel al original porque cambia los énfasis.

En español, por ejemplo, no se dice “buena noche” sino “buenas noches”, en plural. Si se tradujera al francés como “bonnes nuits” o al inglés como “good nights” se estaría cometiendo un error, porque se estaría creando un énfasis que no existe en el original. Si al traducir una novela se le hiciese decir a un personaje que dice “good morning” o “guten morgen” su traducción literal que es “buena mañana”, se lo estaría haciendo hablar de un modo anómalo. Decir en inglés “Good days” por “buenos días” también sería ser infiel.

Hay otros casos de error, Lutero tradujo al alemán El Cantar de los Cantares como Das Hoche Lied (“el más alto cantar”). Lo que pasa es que en hebreo no existen los superlativos y “el cantar de los cantares” quiere decir “el mejor cantar” o “el más alto cantar”. En español “El cantar de los cantares” y en inglés “The song of songs”, se conservó el hebreísmo.

¿Cuál es la calidad de la traducción al español que se hace en la Argentina? Para nosotros la traducción al español hecha en la Argentina tiene la ventaja de que está hecha en un español que es el nuestro y no un español de España. Pero creo que se comete un error cuando se insiste en las palabras vernáculas. Yo mismo lo he cometido. Creo que un idioma de una extensión tan vasta como el español, es una ventaja y hay que insistir en lo que es universal y no local.

Hay una tendencia en todas partes, sin embargo, a acentuar las diferencias, cuando lo que habría que acentuar son las afinidades. Claro que como el Diccionario de la Academia lo que quiere es publicar cada año un volumen más abultado, acepta una cantidad enorme de palabras vernáculas. La Academia Argentina de Letras manda entonces largas listas de, por ejemplo, nombres de yuyos de Catamarca, para que sean aceptadas y abulten el Diccionario.

¿Si me gustó más traducir poesía que a Kafka o a Faulkner? Sí, mucho más. Traduje a Kafka y a Faulkner porque me había comprometido a hacerlo, no por placer. Traducir un cuento de un idioma a otro no produce gran satisfacción.

A propósito de traducciones de prosa, recuerdo un caso interesante. Mi madre tradujo un libro de D.H.Lawrence que se titula: The Woman Who Rode a Horse, como “La mujer que se fue a caballo”, que es más largo que en inglés pero creo que es correcto. En francés, en cambio, lo tradujeron como “La amazona fugitiva”, parece una broma, casi o la traducción del título de un film. Este último tipo de traducciones también depara ejemplos sorprendentes. Recuerdo un film: The Imperfect Lady (“La dama imperfecta”). Cuando se dio aquí le pusieron La Ramera. Claro que el sentido es ése, pero pierde toda la gracia, no? “Una imperfecta dama” es lo contrario de “una perfecta dama” y es muy gracioso; si se pone, en cambio “la ramera” o “la cortesana”, se supone que es más fuerte, pero, al contrario, debilita.

¿Qué me parecen mis textos traducidos a otros idiomas? Los han traducido muy bien. Salvo al alemán. Las traducciones al francés que han hecho Ibarra y Roger Caillois son muy buenas. Las de Di Giovanni al inglés también son buenas. Las traducciones de sonetos que hicieron él y otros poetas americanos son muy buenas porque los han recreado. Las traducciones de sonetos no pueden ser literales y conservar el sentido.

Con mis poemas, en cambio, generalmente encuentro que los han mejorado muchísimo. Salvo en Alemania, como dije. Un traductor alemán tradujo un cuento criollo mío que en algún lugar decía “llegaba un oscuro”. Él, sin darse cuenta de que se trataba del pelaje de un caballo, tradujo: “llegaba el crepúsculo”. Claro, traducía por el diccionario. Pero es el diccionario mismo el que induce a error. De acuerdo a los diccionarios, los idiomas son repertorios de sinónimos, pero no lo son. Los diccionarios bilingües, por otra parte, hacen creer que cada palabra de un idioma puede ser reemplazada por otra de otro idioma. El error consiste en que no se tiene en cuenta que cada idioma es un modo de sentir el universo o de percibir el universo.


Jorge Luis Borges
“Borges en Sur”- págs.321 a 325 – Editorial EMECÉ

A Inconfidência dos Lusófonos. Sim, eu sei que faz tempo que não publico nada aqui no blogue, e com boa razão: trabalho, falta de tempo, e uma preguiça ancestral de escrever em inglês. Isso explica a descarada tentativa de escrever em português, pra ver se sai alguma coisa que preste ou que pelo menos encha de curiosidade os meus 33 leitores anglófonos. Dá-lhe Google Translate.

Hoje, a intrépida intérprete que vos escreve, pegou o metrô, vestida com trajes apropriados para o calor africano que se abate sobre as ruas de São Paulo e desembarcou no Bresser para mais um dia de língua e ouvidos para que vos quero. Mentirinha de efeito não dói. Foi uma moleza, e o melhor, a minha co-cabina era a deliciosa J. Já tinhamos trabalhado juntas uma vez este ano, ocasião em que constatamos que meu santo bate com o dela. Misturar Ogum com a Federação Israelita de São Paulo pode dar certo, não duvide. Ao final, não resisti dizer que adoro o estilo dela. Sua voz levemente arrastada, de timbre metálico, tem um toque cômico. Ela tem que se cuidar para não fazer a platéia rir apesar de o palestrante não ter feito nenhuma gracinha, ou para não transformar uma piadinha esquálida em uma trovoada de gargalhadas.

Estou com pouco trabalho esta semana, o que reaviva os planos de escrever no blogue com freqüência um pouco menos bissexta, portanto fiquem ligados. Tenho também que preparar a minha apresentação como paraninfa da turma de formandos em tradução da Alumni. Essa vai ser boa, porque me sinto em crise profissional. Deus dá nozes a quem está com dor de dentes, or as Vitek put it:

"Several translators told me that they are addicted to translating. If they go cold turkey for too long (when there is no work), they feel the pain, and it is not just the usual pain connected with meager accounts receivable. I know what they mean. I think they miss the magic moment that comes from understanding the natural order of things, when, for a fleeting moment, we become a secretary of the big clockmaker, architect and translator, and take the dictation at record speed without making a single typo."

Que nominho besta hein. "Three years ago, ProZ.com announced KudoZ, the first terms help network for translators. Today, KudoZ is the leading collaboration tool for translators -- over 10,000 professionals have answered questions over 300,000 questions to date. Now, ProZ.com announces an improvement to KudoZ: KudoZ.NET."

So, it seems that Puffy was feeling a bit ambitious on the morning he baptized his desktop-based little monster. It sure raises an eyebrow. He should have called it Kudzter!

On an unrelated note: I dropped my cell phone and I think it has passed away. My house is starting to look like a cemitery of technology devices: two laptops, one printer, one Handspring handheld, one Palmtop...all dead. But look at the bright side: the paper fax machine is still working.

Movies. I watched two good films this weekend, the tearjercker El Hijo de la Novia and Jean-Genet-style Madame Satã. The photography in MS is heavily inspired by Arthur Omar's Antropologia da Face Gloriosa. The blown-up images of ectasy can get tiring after one hour and a half, but it's still a worthwhile movie.



more Arthur Omar pictures here

Mothern. The incredible adventures of girls who have already given birth.