Ccaps Blog

During the 12th Ibero-American Conference of Ministers of Culture, which took place in Portugal in April 2009, Maria Simón, Minister of Education and Culture of Uruguay, announced that in early 2010, the Portuguese language will be adopted as the second official language in the country. This means that the discipline will have to be part of the curriculum in the country’s public schools.

In Uruguay there are language centers where foreign languages are taught for free. These languages include English, French, German, Italian, and soon Portuguese.

The goal of this measure is to reduce the social divide in the country. The government will offer foreign language courses for Uruguayan teachers specializing in Portuguese.

From a political, social and economic point of view, this victory of the Portuguese language not only strengthens the link between Brazil and Uruguay, but it also increases the reach of our language around the world.

Just like Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War: “So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a thousand battles without a single loss. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose. If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.”

Three cheers for the Portuguese Language!

Studies reveal that with time fewer words are used in print advertising. That’s right, people: marketing and advertising people today not only prefer but use mostly visual language!

Increasingly bright ads, where fewer words are shown, are the most successful in the market. I decided to go back and check a few old magazines to compare them with those of today. The difference is shocking! Visual metaphors and iconization have indeed become the soul of the business.

Long before I was born

Late last century

Today

The XXI century advertising is used in a way that words can be free of the shackles of the written word, go beyond the boundaries of creativity and explore logical thinking to the maximum. That is, the word is there, only it is not written…

But for those of us who work with the written language, where will we be?

The localization of files and software programs has become more and more of a global necessity. Proof of this is the World Digital Library launched by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Anyone can access the collection of great libraries and cultural institutions around the world, in seven languages, including Portuguese. And the best part: It’s free!

The image above references the Japanese literary work Genji monogatari (Tale of Genji), by author Murasaki Shikibu. The work is considered one of the oldest novels in the world and is part of the Rare Japanese Book Collection of the US Library of Congress.

This is one of the pearls of literature and is available at the World Digital Library website at http://www.wdl.org. The library offers a huge variety of books, images, manuscripts, maps, films and recordings. All of the written material was localized, including the graphics, logos, menus and options.

To facilitate your navigation, I wrote this “Quick Start Guide” instructing how to get around the site. Each point is numbered according to the image above:

1. Language Bar: Select the dropdown list to choose one of the available languages. Press the red arrow to the right to confirm your choice.
2. Navigation Bar: For a more selective search. There are five available options: Place (divided by geographic region), Time (divided by creation and/or publication date), Topic (divided by subject), Type of Item (divided by type of material such as books, manuscripts, etc.) and Institution (divided by Cultural Institutions and Libraries).
3. Search Bar: For a more extensive search. Type what you are searching for and select the red arrow.
4. Map Search: Click on the number of items available in the region to access them or click on the photo to display the info about that specific item. To see a description of the item and the image in its regular size, you should click on the number of items link (for example, +133 Items).
5. Timeline Bar: Click on a time period to see all the works created in that period.
6. Website Bar: There are five menus in total, including Home Page (regardless of where you are on the site, select this button to return to the Home Page), About (details about the website), Help (a step by step explanation on how to use the site), Contact (web form to get in contact with the staff at WDL) and Legal (legal warnings in regards to the Library collection)
7. Website Logo: Click on the logo to return to the Home Page.

What are you waiting for? Go there and see for yourself!

Hello there! For those of you who do not know me, my name is Natália Araújo and I work as a localization engineer at Ccaps. I have wanted to write a post for the Ccaps Blog but, until now, I could not find anything interesting to write about. Let me try…

Every month, I go to the news stand in search of magazines about general subjects, which in one way or another, will enrich my cultural baggage. Interestingly enough, I came across a magazine specializing in subjects about the Portuguese language, called “Conhecimento Prático da Língua Portuguesa” (Practical Knowledge of the Portuguese Language). The cover of issue 18 called my attention as it had the following headline: “Latin, a language that never goes out of style”.

I wondered how come a dead language could not go out of style… Like any voracious reader, I leafed through the pages to read the story and realized that, even superficially, Latin should be taught to everyone. And exactly at that moment I thought: “It would be great to write a post about the proper use of language in the Ccaps Blog.”

Let’s see. Does any of you know where the word “university” comes from? There I discovered that it comes from the Latin “universitas”, which means “universe”. Another example is the verb “to delete”, which comes from the Latin “delere”, meaning “to destroy”. And much to my surprise, the second person plural of the imperative of the verb “delere” is “delete”, just like that button on your keyboard!

I spoke with some friends who study Languages and confirmed that they all fear case declinations, conjunctions and other things they need to memorize in Latin. On the other hand, they all believe that studying Latin would help (a lot!) the common Brazilian to better understand what they are saying.

We often make mistakes because we do not know the origins of what we are saying. For instance, what is the plural of the Portuguese words “nação,” “pão” and “cristão”? To answer that, we should pay attention to the suffix of these three words. They all end in “-ão”, which is an irregularity in the Portuguese language that presents us with three possibilities in the plural: “-ães”, “-ões” and “-ãos”. But which one is correct?

Had we learned Latin, we would not such doubts, as “nação” comes from the Latin “natione”, so the correct plural form is “nações;” “pão” comes from “pane,” so the correct plural form is “pães;” and “cristão” comes from the Latin word “christianu,” and the correct plural form is “cristãos.”

But the most intriguing part of the story was to find out that even the biggest scholars in the Portuguese Language also butcher the language without even realizing it. Can somebody tell me the correct word for somebody who loves chocolate in Portuguese? I believe most would say “chocólatra” (chocoholic), right? Yet “chocólatra” actually means “to adore a type of octopus called choco;” Chocolate lovers should be called “chocolatólatra”! Living and learning…

Then I had to revisit my concept that Latin, though no longer taught in high school, never stopped to be part of our daily lives.

Stay tuned for the next post on Portuguese trivia!