Seven survival tools for Translating Brazilian Portuguese into
English
Some people handle gobbledygook in translation by the hallowed
GIGO (gobbledygook in, gobbledygook out) method. I don't. I like my
translations to be crystal-clear. The guys who read the stuff I
translate are businesspeople and they do not have the time or the
inclination to pore and ponder over a text, looking up words in an
unabridged dictionary; they want to understand what they have to
read the first time they skim through it. If they don't, they say
"damn the translator," not "damn the author".
The guys who read the stuff I translate are businesspeople and
they do not have the time or the inclination to pore and ponder
over a text, looking up words in an unabridged dictionary.
All this business of "crystal-clear translation for gobbledygook
original" may be a little bit contrary to good translation theory,
but I am not talking about good translation theory here, I am
talking about earning a living. Readers of business translations
expect to understand what they read without difficulty, and I have
a family to feed. Therefore I keep it simple. Perfect
reasoning.
So although my recipe for translation theory may vary from time
to time, it always includes a good shot of Strunk & White's for
the kick. (There is a bibliography of sorts at the end of this
article.) How much S&W's I use depends on many factors. Some
clients like it more than others but at least one guy complained
that I write funny (he was Brazilian, however).
Following my basic recipe, I have developed a set of survival
tools, some of which are shown below. I conducted a couple of
seminars where participants were shown how to use some of them. I
even intend to cram all of them into a small book. But today I must
be contented to squeeze a few of them into this article.
1. My favorite dictionaries
Businesspeople do not like words they don't know. They find
reading a text that requires frequent trips to the dictionary an
irritating task. Some translators seem to ignore that and use words
that are seldom found in the target language. Take homologar? for
instance. The Portuguese-English dictionary will tell you it is
homologate, and a large dictionary will dictionary will tell you
homologate really corresponds to homologar. However, homologar is a
common word in Brazil whereas homologate is not nearly as frequent
in English. For instance, the average Brazilian peão freely
discusses a homologação da rescisão- whereas an American hardhat
probably would flinch at homologation of the termination.
That is why I prefer smaller monolingual dictionaries to
homologate, er, confirm my translation choices. Black's Law
Dictionary has all the legal terms you can think of, including many
a majority of American lawyers and most executives do not know.
Gifis' is a lot shorter and, therefore a lot better if you are
working into English. Translators who dare use a word that is in
Black's but not in Gifi's run the risk of not being understood.
The same goes for non-technical dictionaries. Don't go about
using a word just because you found it in the Oxford English
Dictionary. The OED is an excellent dictionary that contains all
the words nobody knows. If you translate into English, get a few of
those splendid dictionaries they make for foreigners, such as the
Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture and try to limit
your vocabulary to its selection. Of course, for the source
language, the more and bigger dictionaries you have, the
better.
2. The nervous tic
I translate meaning, not nervous tics. One of my clients begins
every second paragraph with por oportuno, informamos também que...
I refuse to begin every second paragraph with because it is
opportune we also inform that. I asked the client why he wrote that
way. He said vício, an addiction. Then I suggested he should go
over his writings, after they were ready, and amputate those
useless proboscises. He thought the idea great, but never got
around to implementing it. So I do it on the translation. By the
way, my charges are based on the word count of original text.
3. The elevated synonym, the unctuous adjective, the local
reference and the geography of places unknown
Many Brazilian writers think calling a rose a rose is beneath
their station. So they call it anything but a rose. Well, not
roses, really, but take the Constitution, for instance. I have a
book where it is variously called a lei maior, a lei magna, nossa
lei fundamental and even a lex legum. Now the Constitução, by any
other name, should be the Constituition and nothing else. I also
refuse to translate o pretório excelso as anything other than the
Brazilian Supreme Court.
The love of elevated language also forces other authors to add
an unctuous adjective to almost every noun. A lawyer will refer to
the guy who works for the other guys as meu erudito colega or o
ilustre jurista. My erudite colleague or the illustrious jurist
inside a business letter sounds too unctuous or ironical in English
(three spoonfuls of Eugene Nida) and I usually resolve that into my
colleague, counsel for X, or something of that sort. The Dickensian
close sem mais para o momento, apresentamos os protestos de nossa
elevada estima becomes yours sincerely.
One of my favorites among constructions of that type is o
legislador pátrio, which I do not dare translate literally, and is
usually best translated as the Brazilian Congress. Certain writers
seem to be ashamed of the word brasileiro and replace it with
pátrio whenever they can.
This leads us to the third type in this group: the local
reference. O Tesouro Nacional may be better translated by the
Brazilian Treasury, a moeda nacional by Brazilian currency. A
língua patria by the Portuguese language. O vernáculo is also the
Portuguese language-another case of the elevated synonym.
The last type in this group is the local geographical reference
that needs some expliciting (a pound of Peter Newmark). When a
newspaper in São Paulo refers to a baixada, it means a baixada
santista, which is better translated as the coastal area around the
city of Santos. O cerrado may by the scrublands of Central Brazil,
where the capital, Brasilia, is located, but also a derogatory
reference to the Federal Government, the irony of which may have to
be compensated somewhere else.
4. The sesquipedal sentence
Portuguese apparently can handle long sentences better than
English can, for a number of alleged reasons I will spare you. Yes,
I know William Faulkner wrote sentences longer than the average
roundworm and some American lawyers suffer from periodophobia
(British lawyers can be stoppophobic). But being neither Faulkner
nor lawyer, I prefer not to burden my reader with those
kilometer-long Brazilian sentences (Brazilians don't write
mile-long sentences; we have gone metric ages ago). So, I start
looking for a good splicing place whenever the sentence runs to
more than 25 words.
Natural splicing places are conjunctions and relative pronouns,
of course. My favorite is sendo que. Have you noticed how we can
write an extraordinarily long sentence, tack a sendo que on at the
end for a breather and then go on for another hundred words or so
without stop? I have been told sendo que is being that, but old Mr.
Nida says it is not. So I translate sendo que as a period.
5. The absolute clause
Even colloquial Portuguese will be sprinkled with initial
absolute constructions, which are possible in English, but not
nearly as common. Thus it is often better to develop them into
clauses with finite verbs. For instance an initial informado por um
acessor de que... may be after an advisor informed him that...Or
indagado se pretendia continuar may very well be when asked whether
he intended to go on.
6. The case of the missing noun
Many Brazilian gobbledygookers are in the habit of dropping the
noun out of noun-adjective phrases. For instance, petição inicial
becomes a inicial. If you don't know that, your are lost, because
you are bound to translate it as the initial? whereas it should be
the complaint.
7. Abstractions, positive and negative
The latest fashion in Brazilian gobbledygook is the negative
abstraction. Abstractions have always plagued gobbledygook, both in
English and Portuguese, it is true, but somehow I feel English
texts use fewer abstracts than their Brazilian counterparts.
Probably the effect of Strunk & White and their followers north
of the Rio Grande. Quantity is of no importance however. What
matters is that sometimes a Portuguese abstraction does not
translate well into English.
Have a look at this: Excesso de pluviosidade está causando um
retardo na construção de estradas, which I found in a newspaper.
Two abstractions: pluviosidade and retardo. Excess pluviosity is
causing a delay in road construction in English is preposterous,
but even Brazilian radio reporters have taken to talking like that
and the average traffic report in São Paulo radio stations sounds
like a translation from a German treatise on higher
metaphysics.
Using Vinay & Darbelnet's transposition tool, you can change
the first abstract into a concrete noun and the second into a verb:
excess [or "too much"] rainfall is delaying road construction.
Funny that this translates literally into perfectly good
Portuguese: excesso de chuva (or "chuva demais") está retardando a
construção de estradas.
A existência de extintores em restaurantes é uma obigatoriedade.
I did find this in my morning paper. I had an extra cup of coffee
to help gulp it down. How can I say obrigatoriedade in English?
Obligation? So, existence of fire extinguishers in restaurants is
an obligation? Or all restaurants are required to keep fire
extinguishers?
The following beauty is cribbed from Equivalences, an excellent
book if you know French: a audiência tem três características:
oralidade, publicidade e contraditório. Try translating the three
abstractions. Better translate it as the hearing has three
characteristics: it must be oral, it must be public and both sides
must be heard.
However, the negative abstraction is even worse: a falta de uma
lei específica resulta na inexigibilidade do imposto. What is
inexigibilidade in English? Non-claimability? Is this a "virtual
word", one of those words that is not necessarily in any dictionary
but can be coined by anyone with sufficient chutzpah? Should we
render it as the lack of a specific law results in the
non-claimability of the tax? May be, but how about the tax may not
be claimed unless a specific law is enacted? This, of course,
requires quite a few spoonfuls of Vinay & Darbelnet
transposition and modulation, but reads a lot better.
Envoi and Bibliography of Sorts
Envoi (not envoy, which is something else) is not in
dictionaries for foreigners and is a word I would hardly use in
translation, but this is an original text and translators are
supposed to have a large vocabulary anyway.
I could go on and on developing this article, but I had to stop
somewhere and I decided to stop where I did. I will probably return
to the subject in future articles, if this raises as much interest
as I think the issue deserves.
There is a lot of talk about whether we should translate from
our native language into a foreign language. There is even a very
interesting and realistic article on that subject, called Direction
of Translation by Allison B. Lonsdale in the Routledge Encyclopedia
of Translation. But I don't translate into English because of what
professor Lonsdale says. I translate into English because when I
began nobody told me I should not-and when they did it was too late
to stop. In fact, I think it is excellent training: one learns to
translate into Portuguese by translating into English and vice
versa. Thank God I am not a university professor.
I seldom wax theoretical and thus am not adept at preparing
bibliographies, but the data below will certainly help you find the
books, if your really wanto to.
S&W's obviously refers to the classic Elemens of Style
(Macmillan) by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White. There are
several other books on good English writing and one of my favorites
is Style, by J. Williams (Scott, Foresman and Company). These two
should be required reading wherever advanced English is taught.
They are not.
I own J. P. Vinay and J. Darbelnet's classic, Stylistique
comparée du français et de l'anglais, in the first French edition,
by Didier, but I saw an English translation recently. I have not
had a chance to examine it, though. Worth reading even if you do
not translate French. Equivalences, a fascinating book by Eric
Astington, (Cambridge) amplifies and extends V&D's work in many
ways. Unfortunately, it only compares French and English. A nice,
short, introduction to translation techniques is Procedimentos
Técnicos de Tradução, by Heloisa Gonçalves Barbosa (Pontes). If you
have not been introduced to translation theory before, this may be
the book to begin with-if you can find it.
Peter Newmark's Approaches to Translation (Pergamon) is one of
my favorites, one of those marvelous books by someone who knows not
all translation studies should by restricted to literary
translation.
Black's Law Dictionary (West) is, as far as I know, the largest
English law dictionary. Barron's publishes a shorter dictionary by
Steven Gifis, my favorite for into-English work.
Longman, Cambridge and Collins Cobuild publish superb
dictionaries for foreigners. Even if you are a native speaker of
English, you should have a look at them. The basic idea behind them
is not all the words there are, but all the words people use.
Wonderful to help you avoid those texts that are perfectly correct
but do not read well because the vocabulary is so highfalutin'. The
best words are those found in at least two of them.
I have never been able to lay my hands on any original work by
Eugene Nida. However his theories are well known and references are
often found in other people's work, for instance, in Peter
Newmark.
This article was originally published at Translation Journal
(http://accurapid.com/journal). The article published here has been
abridged/adapted.
By Danilo Nogueira