Contrapor2006. First Portuguese Translation Conference. Held under the auspices of FIT and organized by the Associação de Tradução em Língua Portuguesa. Lisbon, Sept 11 and 12, 2006. Great tip from the great João Roque Dias.

What's wrong with What's wrong? Jayme has sent me the document read by Agenor Soares dos Santos on the recent Alumni event. I will copy and paste an excerpt. I also have excerpts from the book he's writing, exciting material, e-mail me if you want more info.

Pergunto: Será que a grande ocorrência da pergunta What´s wrong? já criou um decalque? Primeiro, ponhamos a tradução em contexto: Antes da influência do inglês, as perguntas normais eram, por exemplo, além das traduções acima: 'Aconteceu alguma coisa?' 'De que se trata?' 'Alguma coisa não vai bem?' 'Que foi?' 'Que foi que houve?' 'Por que você está com essa cara? Está me escondendo alguma coisa?' Enfim, há em português inúmeras formas de perguntar se alguém ou alguma coisa não vai bem, se aconteceu alguma coisa, qual é o ponto em que o interlocutor discorda ou o que o incomoda, que mal ele vê em alguma coisa, fato ou ocorrência etc. Em nenhuma delas se sente necessidade do adjetivo 'errado'; parece ser este mais um caso em que persiste o primeiro sentido que a pessoa aprendeu na escola; basta abrir qualquer dicionário bilíngüe e se verá a extraordinária polissemia desse adjetivo. Note-se a distinção: Quando o adjetivo português varia - por exemplo, em 'Há alguma coisa errada?' - a pergunta parece natural. Mas já não parecerá tanto se se antepõe 'de', se acrescenta 'com' e o período não termina aí. Isso se dá tanto em perguntas como em afirmações: 'Há algo de errado com você?'/'...com o seu carro?' 'O que há de errado com ele?'/'...com você?' 'Não, você está enganado: não há nada de errado comigo'. Ou considere-se o with seguido de um gerúndio, para ver as construções canhestras a que o decalque poderia chegar: Como entraria o 'errado' em perguntas como 'What´s wrong with dancing?/with asking him yourself? etc. É visível aqui a tradução preguiçosa, ou a insensibilidade ao decalque.

Oh Alexis. The Alumni Translation Congress ended yesterday. I gave a workshop on software localization on Wednesday. One and hour and a half were obviously not enough for everything I had to say, but I hope that my audience enjoyed it. Clutz that I am I tripped over a cable and almost sent computer and LCD crashing to the floor, but Fuad Assam gave me a helping hand.

Last night I broke away from the current review implementation that I'd been working on for eight hours in a row with such tremendous effort that I think I must have developed cerebral hemorrhoids. And what could be more fun for a burnout translator than attending a translation congress?

So I inched through the crammed São Paulo traffic all the way to Alumni where I met the keynote speakers Alexis Levitin and Agenor Soares dos Santos, figure of myth and author of Guia Prático da Tradução Inglesa.

Alexis is great fun. He announced that he was going to talk Sex in Translation and delighted the audience by commenting on the translation of three rather sensual poems, with repartee coming from Isa, who was sitting by my side. (I have the translations here, they were published by the Amazonian Literary Review, maybe I'll post my favorite later)

Now, what was really odd for me was that Alexis had seen my mom's sculptures on an exhibit at Citibank that very same day. He was raving about her work, about how the woman takes centerstage in her pieces and man was a mere accessory. He said that he could tell a lot about her by the way she casts her bronzes.

Well, if he can tell a lot about her I can tell ten times as much...especially to my shrink!

Anyway, Alexis was so enthralled by my mom's sculptures that he didn't Isa a chance to produce her typical statement that "the Enigmatic Mermaid is the best translator in Brazil".

But she did say it to Agenor, who was surprised at never having seen the name of such a great talent anywhere.

"She is the hidden pearl of technical translation. Her clients will wait for 6 months to have her translate a manual (not true, 6 days maybe). She is known by the initiated as the queen of online glossaries and of the Haut and Bas Egypte."

Well the queen of Haut and Bas Egypte is more interested in finding out when Agenor's new book is being released. He presented us with the table of contents and it's simply fantastic.

I Congresso Nacional de Tradução da ABRATES. To be held in Rio, Sept. 27 to 28/2003.

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