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Re: Translating docs (was: Hiring and Tech Writing 101)
Subject:Re: Translating docs (was: Hiring and Tech Writing 101) From:Joaquim Baptista <px -at- EASYPHONE -dot- PT> Date:Wed, 13 Jan 1999 18:23:14 +0000
At 10:44 99/01/13 -0700, David Dvorkin wrote:
>Joaquim Baptista wrote
>
>> From the point of view of a Portuguese, Brazilian
>> translations suck big
>> time, specially when done by Brazilians. It is so bad, that I really
>> prefer an English version to a Brazilian one.
>
>Because the two versions of Portuguese differ that much, or
>because Brazilian translators aren't very good?
The languages differ in the sound and in verb usage -- Brazilians prefer
the gerund, while Portuguese prefer the infinitive. This difference
distracts the Portuguese reader.
The big problem, however, is attitude. Brazilian translators translate
every word technical term, usually just by adapting the English term in
some simple way... even when there is some established Portuguese term for
the same meaning. The result is a text with lots of neologisms, usually
undefined neologisms. Understanding the text usually implies recovering
the original English term from the neologism, and then finding out what the
original English term means. The final result is that I *never* buy a
technical book or magazine translated to Brazilian -- the text may be
easier to read than English, but it is harder to understand.
Portuguese prefer not to translate the English term until some "consensus"
translation appears. That is, either you take the time to translate the
term properly, or you don't translate the term at all.
Right now Portuguese and Brazilian use different words for the same
meaning. For example, "aplication" translates as "aplicação" in
Portuguese, while Brazilians prefer "aplicativo" or "aplicacional". In a
typical translated interface, most menu options differ between the
Brazilian and the Portuguese usage.
A final problem is quality. If you buy the Brazilian translation, you may
find problems in the product or in the translation, specially if it was a
quick job. If you buy the English original, you avoid bugs introduced by
the translation. So, Portuguese that can read English properly usually
prefer the original English version.
Brazilian vs. Portuguese: Different cultures, different goals...
--
Joaquim Baptista, alias pxQuim Precisa de uma contabilista?
- px -at- easyphone -dot- pt (01) 8684294
