Has your client asked you to translate something in European Portuguese, or even to “review” a European Portuguese text into Brazilian Portuguese? He may have asked you whether it is the same thing to translate a text in one language or the other. Mine has done that as well. I’ll briefly point out here some of the reasons why it is virtually impossible for Brazilians to work with European Portuguese texts and vice-versa.
Phonetically speaking, here in Brazil, we pronounce all vowels to the fullest, whether they are stressed or not. In Portugal, there is a tendency to pronounce only the stressed vowels. But what is more important in our case are the differences in meaning and syntax.
In Brazil, we prefer to use the gerund (e.g. “Estamos trabalhando” when one wants to say, “We are working”). The Portuguese however prefer the infinitive form (“Estamos a trabalhar,” when they want to say the same thing). In Brazil, we use the pronoun “você” for the second person singular; in Portugal, the pronoun “vos” is generally more used. In a sentence like “If I read to you,” you would hear “Se eu lesse para você” in Brazil and “Se eu vos lesse” in Portugal.
Here, the expression “falar consigo” means speaking to oneself, while in Portugal it means speaking to you. It is quite common there to use the comparative form “mais pequeno” (smaller), while in Brazil the grammatically correct comparative form “menor.”
Mute consonants were mostly eliminated in Brazil yet are still widely used in Portugal. Words like “ação” (action) and “ótimo’ (great), for instance, are written as “acção” and “óptimo” in Portugal. The umlaut is still used in Brazil to mark the pronunciation of the “u” in diphthongs, examples of which are words like “lingüiça” (sausage) and “freqüência” (frequency). Only in Brazil.
Stressing is also different in both countries because of the pronunciation: while in Brazil, we write “tônico” (tonic) and “cômodo” (comfortable), in Portugal it is written as “tónico” and “cómodo” with an open “o.”
There are also many differences in meaning. The ocean between us has developed several semantic differences, making each language increasingly distinct. In Portugal, a “bicha enorme” is nothing more than a large queue. In Brazil, however, one would think that you are talking about a very tall gay man.
Do speakers in Brazil and Portugal understand each other? No doubt. Do they want to read in each other’s variant? I don’t think so!
For more information on this topic, I suggest reading Fabiano Cid’s article published in an early edition of the Ccaps Newsletter: Nice country; I’ll take it
