Ccaps Blog

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This refers to the directions the Portuguese language is heading through popular use.

The process of simultaneous interpretation at the UN allows each representative to speak in their native language and have their speech translated as they speak. A mistranslated word, a misunderstood sentence, some poor translation – all this can turn an innocent speech into an international catastrophe. And we are not short of examples.

In the course of development of African countries, delegates often have a tendency to highlight the fact that ancient tribal traditions are no longer observed. A French-speaking African delegate once stated that “Africa no longer builds altars for the gods” (L’Afrique n’érige plus des autels aux dieux). However, because the interpreter thought that the word “autels” was in fact “hôtels” and that “aux dieux” was “odieux,” his translation was “Africa no longer builds horrible hotels” (L’Afrique n’érige plus des hôtels odieux).

During the decolonization period, a representative of the then British Empire reported the activities that took place in the African region under British rule. When he spoke of the local attempts to fight the plague of rhinoceros beetle, the Russian translator did not understand the word “beetle;” only “rhinoceros.” The Soviet delegate, under the impression that the region was being flooded by countless rhinos, asked what kind of equipment the natives were receiving to resist such a terrible invasion. When told they received a broom and buckets with chemical products, this obviously sounded to the Russian delegate as a lack of willingness from the colonizers to distribute decent weapons to the local population, who could not protect themselves against the hordes of rhinos. Wait, there’s more: as a demonstration of unheard of ecological concern, he asked why the last hundreds of rhinos should be eliminated from the region. The British delegate joyously replied that this was not a concern, since there were still millions of such animals there. “Every spring they fly in large swarms and eat tree coats,” said the Brit.

When an interpreter tries to improvise or adapt a very well-known proverb, he or she occasionally creates some rather interesting situations. One such interpreter, while trying to translate from English to Spanish the saying “there is more than one way to skin a cat,” was suddenly inspired to adapt the core meaning to a bullfight. Excited with his creativity, he made up a saying and thought it worked well in the Spanish language: “One can catch a bull with more ways than by the horns.” The session was interrupted by the loud laughs of the Spanish-speaking delegates. They were afraid that anyone would think of grabbing the animal by some place other than the traditional horns of the obviously well-hung “toro.”

Interpreters have been used for hundreds of years to make sure that people who speak different languages can communicate. There is the well-known case of an ambassador from the Swiss cantons in the court of Louis XIV who knew enough French to understand that what was being said to the French ruler in German was being translated as excessively flattering and servile compliments. After the speech, the ambassador reprimanded the interpreter saying he could understand some French and what had been translated was not what had actually been said. The interpreter’s swift reply was as follows: “Indeed, ambassador. I just translated what should have been said.”

We occasionally have to prepare files to be translated to 20 languages or more. This means we must use programs and file formats that support Eastern and Western characters, Cyrillic characters and so on.

First of all, let’s imagine the RTF format, because it is so easily opened, is a good format.

However, after looking at its structure more carefully, we find out that it employs the 8-bit format, with Unicode escapes in order to block non-Western characters.

In this case, the segmenting of the .rtf files may disrupt some strings.

The ideal procedure then would be to use the standard format of Microsoft Word: DOC

Although it is often difficult to use Trados to perform .doc file analyses or clean-ups, this is still one of the best ways to avoid problems in the translation process.

It is however advisable to keep a version of the files in .RTF format for analyses and another version in .DOC format, which will be sent to translators.

Sorry, no English translation for this post.
This is a celebration party only for Portuguese speakers