A Língua Portuguesa. A brief historical overview.

Words that don't have a one-to-one translation. An interesting thread at ProZ, although to me it's pretty obvious that you can always reach a compromise by paraphrasing or using descriptive translations.

A few excerpts:

In Finnish language we have some sauna related words which, I assume, don't have a direct equivalent in any other language.

"löyly" = the heat wave you get when you throw water on the hot stones in the sauna

"vasta" or "vihta" (depending which part of Finland you come from) = the bunch of birch twigs (incl. the leaves) used for slapping against the naked body in order to increase the "löyly" sensation and to purify the body and the soul.

In Greek we have the word Meraki. It is a great word but is hard to describe in English. It is a way of doing something (a mix of love and style and enjoyment). It is a feeling. So if you do something with meraki,(from making a salad to decorating) it means that you have given something of yourself when doing it (positive of course)!

" Kreng Jai " In Thai
I'm not sure whether there is any equal word in English. But I once heard one westerner say " I can't find this word in my language " or sth .
When your friend offer to make you a cup of tea. This feeling "Kreng Jai" might happen in your mind. Not because you don't want a cup of tea. But you feel that your friend don't need to spend their effort for your own affair.

I just thought of this Dutch word. Uitwaaien is a verb meaning "walking in the wind for fun". I can't think of an equivalent verb in our neighbouring countries.



This other thread is also quite intriguing: interpreting in a psychiatric setting. It must be a trippy experience, I tell you.

Not Peter Greenway's greatest movie. But I quite enjoyed it. 8 and 1/2 women is cool, and shows Peter Greenway's at his most Godardesque while trying to be Fellinian. Vivian Wu is great as the Japanese interpreter, but I find the most amazing of these women to be Giaconda, the perpetually pregnant femina.

Brazil goes the "coussin d'air gonflable" way in language matters. Somebody please translate this into English for me, I am too distraught.

"O Senado aprovou nesta terça-feira (27) projeto de lei que trata da proteção, promoção, defesa e uso da língua portuguesa e estabelece que o poder público fica obrigado a incentivar o ensino do idioma por meio de verbas orçamentárias e com a colaboração da comunidade. Como houve emendas, a proposta retornará à Câmara dos Deputados.

Pela decisão do Plenário, deve ser obrigatório o uso da língua portuguesa em documentos da administração pública direta, indireta e das fundações destinados ao conhecimento público. As palavras e expressões em língua estrangeira atualmente em uso nos documentos públicos deverão ser substituídos por palavras ou expressões equivalentes em língua portuguesa no prazo de um ano."

(Read more)

What my personal take on this? I'm totally against it. Building a legal fence around a language is ilogical, xenophobic and impossible. English wouldn't have the rich vocabulary it has if it didn't accept gladly so many words from other languages.

By the way, this draft bill was proposed by the same infamous leftist politician that appears to be making behind the scenes moves to regulate the profession of translators in Brazil. This controversial proposal set the translators lists alight last month, established a deep rift between technical and literary translators, caused a group of friends and I to begin discussing the foundation of a Associação Paulista de Tradutores and left my nerves too frayed for blogging.

This Pretty Little Thing called Software. This word list is kind of cute, especially if you want to compare translations for different locales, say PT Brazilian and PT European, and don't want to go through the trouble of downloading the complete set of Microsoft localization glossaries in another language. It came through GlossPost, which has been a source of renewed excitment for me. I never knew there was an online Russian - Spanish dictionary of economic terms, for example.

What is better than the arrival of Friday evening? The arrival of Friday evening when you've just added the last period to a 35k-word, painfully complex translation.

Habemus Laptop. Guess what? After almost a year in the repair shop waiting for a new keyboard I decided to take my laptop home, reformat it and make do with an attached keyboard. No sooner had we reformatted it the keyboard started working again. My computer guy says it was probably a virus, not the Mermaid Jr.'s water squirting practices.

I've been terribly busy for the last month or so, making an indecent amount of money, by my standards, that is. Sorry folks, blogging is on hold. Next week I will have more time to blog my silly stories of the exciting translation world. Speaking of which, have you already checked Transblawg? It's a blog specializing in English-German legal translation, by Margaret Marks.

I also loved these African barber shop signs found at Solipsistic.

Anthony Pym in Brazil. Write it down in your datebooks.

Anthony Pym, autor de Pour une éthique du traducteur, Method in Translation History, Negotiating the Frontier, Translators and Intercultures in Hispanic History e muitos artigos acadêmicos, dará as seguintes palestras em São Paulo na próxima semana:

3a feira 10 de junho, 10h, PUC, CEAL (Laboratório de Línguas), Andar Térreo, Prédio Novo. PUC-SP, Rua Monte Alegre 984
Risk analysis in translation processes


3a feira 10 de junho, 14h, Sala 102, Prédio de Letras, Av Prof. Luciano Gualberto 403 USP
A non-Lockean approach to translation


4a feira 10 de junho, 14h, Sala 107 , Prédio de Letras, Av Prof. Luciano Gualberto 403 USP
Indeterminism and the role of intercultures in translation

Bridging the Language Gap at the United Nations and Translating: the invisible act.

On my nightstand. I'm currently reading Becoming a Translator, by Doug Robinson. I highly recommend it to anyone thinking of becoming a translator and also to established professionals. I met Doug Robinson when he came to Brazil circa 1998 or so and I'm pleased to see that many of the ideas he explored in his series of talks are expanded on the book.

From the Literatti, who are discussing the issue of translator visibility so cherished by Venutti, comes this anecdote about Guimarães Rosa in translation:

Contam que Milton Campos, que foi governador de Minas, senador, um homem inteligente e íntegro, encontrou com o escritor e disse:
- Rosa, acabo de ler Grande Sertão em alemão. Que livro magnífico! Eu já havia lido em português, mas não entendi a metade.

Guimarães Rosa is on the translator spotlight these days due to the publication of the correspondence between this foremost Brazilian writer and his Italian translator Edoardo Bizzarri.

Alfredo Bosi says:

Edoardo Bizzarri verteu para o italiano, em 1963, as novelas Corpo de Baile, que saíram no ano seguinte pela editora Feltrinelli. A
correspondência entre o tradutor e Guimarães Rosa - que em boa hora se reedita - dá testemunho de uma bela cooperação intelectual e humana. Bizzarri, humanista vigoroso, de fino gosto literário, debruçou-se sobre o texto do narrador mineiro e crivou-o de perguntas sobre o significado de centenas de palavras sertanejas e arcaicas e de invenções poéticas que fazem de Corpo de baile uma constelação de fantasia e realismo. E Guimarães Rosa, estimulado por um tradutor todo paixão e escrúpulo, responde-lhe abrindo os tesouros da sua sabedoria de naturalista, poliglota e leitor onívoro de literatura e religião. Lendo essas cartas, reconhecemos, uma vez mais, a extrema sansibilidade verbal do criador de Miguilim e aprendemos muito daquele universo a um tempo real e mágico, exato até o nome preciso de cada ervinha do campo e fantástico pela sua arraigada crença no mito e na relação com a transcedência.

A TRADUTORA

tu lês. antes de ti, ela muda as palavras antes dela,
eu escrevo, eu passei por aqui, ela passou por aqui,
tu passas agora por aqui


entendes isto? ela está onde tu estarás, eu estou onde
ela estará. eu corro pelas palavras, ela persegue-me.
tu corres atrás de nós para nos veres correr.


eu escrevo casa e continuo pelas palavras. ela segura
as letras da casa e escreve vida. tu lês vida e entendes casa
e vida. eu não sei o que entendes.


eu corro. ela corre atrás de mim. tu corres atrás dela.
não existimos sózinhos. sorrimos quando paramos,
quando nos encontramos aqui


José Luís Peixto, A Casa, a Escuridão, Temas e Debates, Outubro 2002

On Hold. Ok, before anybody starts to wonder. Estou super ocupada por causa de uma briga tremenda que eclodiu nas listas de tradução sobre a questão da r-e-g-*-lamentação da profissão. Por enquanto não vai dar tempo de blogar mesmo. Estamos fundando uma a-s-s*-ciação de tradutores do Estado de S.Paulo. Mais notícias em breve

There is something magical about waking up early in Piracicaba and unexpectedly watch balloons flying by your window. It's even more fun if you've been in a baloon once, in another lifetime and continent. I'm terrified of heights, but there is something so majestic and dreamlike about ballons, that given another chance, I would hop into the basket at once.

UNESCO's Clearing House for Literary Translation. I was translating around the neighborhood, so I couldn't help checking this link out. The Recommendation on the Legal Protection of Translators and Translations and the Practical Means to Improve the Status of Translators is old as Moses, but it's the first time I ever laid eyes on it. It pleases me that Unesco put this one together for us, even though, como se diz por aqui, "hell is crowded with people with good intentions". Practically speaking, what is the impact this recommendation has had on my career? None whatsoever.