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According to an article by John Yunker, Web Globalization Predictions: 2008 and Beyond, which was published in his blog, Global by Design, Google is also after a bite of our daily bread. They are improving Google Translate and the integration with Google Apps.

Google Translate is yet another machine translation tool. Like all other tools, to work well it would need a powerful database with all kinds of text and the corresponding translation. Yet to create this humongous database, Google is considering to suggest Google Apps users to upload their translation memories so that Google Translate became more complete and apt to provide good quality translations.

Used as part of Google Apps, Google Translate is the ideal tool for real-time translation of emails and websites. The result might not be ideal, but would improve over time.

This will probably take a long time, but it seems a new player in this market is born (and this player definitely wants to move our cheese!)

“Translator, you are in my hands.” (Google)

How many words can you put in a “lauda” (a Brazilian metric used in translation that more or less corresponds to a page)? To answer this question is as easy as answering what are the exact measures of a size 6, 8 or 10. That depends… 

“Lauda” was a commonly used metric in a time when one used typewriters. It consisted of a paper form with an upper and bottom ruler to count each type (in general, 60 to 80 types) and a ruler on each side to mark the lines (20 to 30 or more lines). When typewriters became obsolete and computers started to rule, these metrics became even more flexible and were rapidly adapting to each person’s (or company’s) needs.

If you search the Internet, you will find references to “laudas” of every possible size – from 1,000 types (!) to 2,100 characters, as suggested by the Brazilian Translator’s Union. But let’s be fair here. There are several websites where translators and reviewers offer their services quoted with “laudas” with instructions on how to reach the number of characters using MS Word features.

Yet the client is on the other side of this chasm. I have seen all: “laudas” with 150 words or 300 words that surprisingly enough are supposed to have the same size. How come? 

It will take some time before the day when we can count some good old words costing the same, regardless of the number of characters they have… 

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

The more the time passes, the more I convince myself that people in general know little – or nothing at all – about the type of work a language professional does. In Brazil, translation is undervalued, since the general – and totally mistaken – belief is that “in order to translate, one merely has to know a foreign language and culture.” This is why I have decided to write this small text for our corporative blog. I will try to trace back my steps in Liberal Arts course, pointing out what I consider to be the highlights of what it means to be a language professional – everything I have learned (or not) and what I have brought as life experience. I have tried to condense this in 10 small topics.

A nice image from a Carnegie Report article on Liberal Arts

1- Linguistics is the Math part in a Language Graduate Course

One of the first subjects I had to undertake in college was Linguistics 101. It’s quite an interesting subject, for it opens the student’s eyes to language rationale: how do languages work? Do people with poor education speak in a wrong way? How do we acquire the language faculty? What does it mean to master a language? All these questions, combined with several new, fundamental concepts, helped me understand my field of work from a scientific point of view (the science of language). It also contributed for the elimination of many wrong laymen ideas about the subject, such as “people only speak ‘good Portuguese’ in Europe,” or “people who don’t follow grammar rules are stupid.” I must say, however, that studying all that was tough: I had to master a great amount of content right in the first term.

2- Writing is an art you learn; writing well is a gift you improve

There is no escape. Anyone who attempts to undertake a language course in college has to write tons of texts. And this particular work becomes a lot easier if you are an experienced traveler in the roads of letters. Although I had many subjects that focused on the improvement of writing skills, I could not help but notice that some previous knowledge and master in writing techniques is crucial to make the course easier. It is also half way through when it comes to taking up a career as a translator. Nevertheless, from what I could observe in many of my classmates, writing is something you teach, yeah, I give you that. But writing well, mastering the language… oh, this is something far more difficult; the person must have some sort of innate skills to write. One must have an enhanced linguistic rationale, as if he or she had been born to use language capabilities thoroughly.

3- English: show me what you got

How much English knowledge is needed to undertake a bilingual Liberal Arts course? Roughly speaking, none whatsoever. Most courses have a leveling process, consisting of subjects aimed at teaching the language, something close to an English course. However, to become a translator, or even to do better in the course as a whole, the student should master the language in every possible way (writing, speaking, listening and reading skills). This is extremely important, especially because you will be so occupied in studying new concepts that you will have little or no time to dedicate yourself fully to learn the language. It is better to enter the course being aware of this. The amount of knowledge is also an essential aspect. To be a good translator, the student should start the course knowing how to write good essays, having a decent vocabulary and showing above-average written and oral production. In other words: if you are the type of person who is capable of understanding everything that is said in an American sitcom, without reading the subtitles, or if you can get the lyrics only by hearing the songs by artists like Michae Jackson, you are in the right track.

That’s it for now. On the next post, I intend to discuss things I have learned in translation subjects. See you next time!

Sailing through still uncharted seas, I found myself reading a chronicle by Luiz Fernando Veríssimo that had been published by Jornal do Brasil in November 1997 entitled “Insolência” (Insolence). Just like everything he writes, it was wonderful. It talks about word processing software, automatic translators and the sorrows of those obliged to deal with them. I highly recommend this text.

The chronicle was found on the opening page of a thesis about machine translation written by Carolina Alfaro. And to make it more interesting, she placed a “translated” version by Altavista Translation Service below the chronicle. I have not read the entire thesis, but it looks interesting and provides a general overview of the available translation tools.

It’s a shame that I didn’t have this chronicle with me over the weekend when someone asked whether we used automatic translators here at the office. This text would have been much more effective than the explanation I gave… =)