So I wrote this silly post a few days ago and Marco Neves himself popped by to comment on it, which was nice. And then a couple of days later I realised I’d made a ridiculous typo in it and written “patroa” in place of “pátria”
*facepalm*
But it’s OK, because an eagle-eyed reader who spotted the mistake told me it still worked because patroa, the feminine form of “patrão” can also mean “wife“, just as in english you might hear blokey blokes refer to “the boss” or “she who must be obeyed” or whatever. And I’m married to someone who speaks a língua portuguesa, albeit with an accent the mainlanders sometimes affect not to understand, so I’ll just point to the publication date, 1 Abril, and pass it off as a joke. Yes, I am clever and funny and I never, ever make typos.
Signing into the Avanti Trains Wi-Fi the other day, I had to enter my personal details, including my title – you know, Mr, Mrs, Miss, etc. As usual, since my phone is in portuguese, the site delivered the portuguese version of the page and this was the list I got.
My first thought was that this was some sort of data quality error – maybe they had included a couple of department names (Perda=lost property? And Recuperação de desastres= Disaster Recovery) in their list of titles and that whoever had been given the job of translating it had just translated them without thinking.
But in reflection, how would that even happen? After a couple of minutes, I realised the original list was OK, it was just a spectacularly terrible bit of AI translation.
So starting from the top:
Senhor/a Deputado/a refer to members of parliament and since that would just be one item in an English list, I assume they started out as “lord” and “lady” or something
Perda is my favourite: Miss. One of the meanings of perda is a miss or a loss.
MS must be Ms. MS does exist in Priberam as the abbreviation for a Brazilian province called Mato Grosso do Sul.
Recuperação de Desastres is the biggest leap, but since there isn’t a “Doutor” in the list, my guess is that this one started out as “Dr”, so the AI read it as “DR” and since DR stands for Disaster Recovery in management speak, it’s translated it as Recuperação de Desastres
Rev isn’t translated. Boring.
Then you’ve got Mr and Mrs and the unpronounceable Mx that a few people were trying to make happen in about 2020, much to the annoyance of everyone else.
I wonder how much the consultant charged them for this load of crap. It’s a brilliant example of what happens if you cut corners!
Here’s a translation of a relatively upbeat, but very traditional Lisbon Fado written by Ricardo Borges de Sousa in the early years of the twentieth century and sung here by Maria Teresa de Noronha. It is well-enough regarded to be the subject of a whole episode of “A Trilogia do Fado” on RTP, but it isn’t the only version of the song; there seem to be lots of variants each with their own set of lyrics.
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Quem me dera que voltasse O doce tempo de além Sentada junto à lareira A ouvir cantar minha mãe
If only you would came back The sweet, far-off time Seated together at the fireside Listening to my mother sing
Ó tempo, tempo ditoso Da vida eterno sorriso Que tornas em paraíso Um mundo tão enganoso Quando à minha mãe, choroso Após um beijo na face Lhe pedia que cantasse Uma trova de bonança Esse tempo de criança Quem me dera que voltasse
Oh time, happy time Eternal smile of life That turns in paradise Into such a deceptive world When my mother, tearful, After a kiss on the face was asked to sing A soothing song** That time of childhood If only it would come back
Tempos que não voltam mais Da nossa infância ridente Em que eu vivia contente Correndo atrás dos pardais Das paredes dos casais Que a nossa aldeia contém Branquinhas como a cecém Mudas como a gratidão E recordam com paixão O doce tempo de além
Times that will never come again Of our laughing childhood When I lived happily Chasing sparrows From the walls of couples That lived in our village White as lillies Mute with gratitude And they remember with live The sweet far-off time
*I really struggled to make sense of the first four lines when I was following the lyrics on letras.com because it has the word “ternas” in place of “tornas”, and fair enough, it does sound like that, but I couldn’t make it make sense. Why is it feminine and plural? is he talking about herself and her friends? But how does that follow on with the line before and after? It was definitely fishy but it could make sense if she was talking about that idyllic scene turning into a deceptive world, so maybe “torna-se”, but that would have the “se” in front of the verb because it’s after que. Tornasse? But why would it be subjunctive? I had a look around but most online sources seem to have screen-scraped letras.com so they had the same word. Then I found a site that used “terras”. I hate that less, but I still don’t buy it. And then finally I came across this site that uses “tornas” and I am absolutely ready to believe that!
**I wasn’t sure about this one, but when you look up trova and bonança, it makes sense. I tried the whole line in gtranslate and it said “a thunderous bonanza” which doesn’t really fit the mood.
Annoyed to find I got about a third of these wrong. Even after two more attempts at guesses I was still two short of a full house. Maddening! How can prepositions be so completely hatstand? So I’m putting the whole exercise up here and writing up the reason for each one in a way that will probably make the whole thing illegible but hopefully should pound the message into my brain. The original text is from Visão, I think, but it doesn’t seem to be online so I can’t link to the original – it’s cited in Português em Foco.
A fellow preposition non-understander in action
Green is for the prepositions themselves
Pink is for the explanations
Cresce a moda dos treinadores que vão a (I put à, but they’re visiting clients “at home”, not “at the house”) casa, mas só para (straightforward “for”) quem pode pagar‑lhes e detesta ginásios!
Duas da (“de tarde” would be in the afternoon, but adding the article indicates something like “the afternoon in question”) tarde. Equipada a (I used “com” which Linguee seemed to think was the most likely option but equipada a rigor seems to be a set phrase for “in your gym kit”) rigor, Maria João recebe o treinador que, durante uma hora, lhe puxará pelo (puxar pelo físico is another expression and it just means “work out”. I had no idea and just guessed some old rubbish) físico, sem (straightforward “without”) sair de casa. Os ensaios no Teatro Infantil de Lisboa não roubam à (extremely counter-intuitive for english-speakers, but “roubar a” means “steal from”) atriz, de (straightforward “of” – because she is 40 years old) 40 anos, as duas ou três horas semanais de treino com o Paulo, responsável pela (responsável por / responsible for) sua boa forma. Maria João explica a opção doméstica: a sua profissão é muito exigente e a deslocação a (“deslocar(-se) a” means to go to relocate – or just go somewhere, really) um ginásio é tempo perdido. Além de (além de just means “aswell as”) que as aulas em (straightforward “in”) grupo raramente correspondem às (straightforward “to the”) necessidades particulares de (straightforward “of”) cada um.
Paulo, o treinador privado, diz dominar uma técnica especial. Os exercícios dele exploram a funcionalidade do corpo humano, o que quer dizer que obrigam a pessoa a (straightforward “to” – which you need after “obrigar”) trabalhar os músculos da (unexpected use of “of the same way” where in english we would say “in the same way”) mesma forma que os usa no dia a dia. Um colchão, uma bola suíça, uma bola medicinal, bandas elásticas com pegas e uma plataforma instável destinada a (straightforward “to”) treinar o equilíbrio do aluno são os apetrechos que leva consigo para as casas dos clientes. De (De is used to indicate “wearing a…”) camisola preta, com (striaghtforward “with”) Treinador Pessoal escrito a (counter-intuitive use of “a” where translating literally from english would make you want to write “em” because it’s written in white) branco nas costas, ele incentiva Maria João a (a-infinitive = “contracting”) contrair os abdominais, a (a-infinitive = “relaxing”) relaxar os braços, a (a-infinitive = “lifting”) levantar a perna esquerda e a (a-infinitive = “offering”) oferecer resistência ao movimento do elástico. Os treinos individuais ao (straightforward “at the”) domicílio custam entre (straightforward “between”) 30 e 70 euros por (straightforward “per”) sessão e duram de (straightforward “from”) 60 a (straightforward “to”) 90 minutos.
Embora as condições em casa não tenham comparação com (straightforward “with”) os equipamentos, os estúdios ou as piscinas dos ginásios, há vantagens na (straightforward “in the”) opção doméstica, sobretudo para (straightforward “for”) figuras públicas que querem fugir de (I put “aos” and then changed it to “a” and actually I don’t think I was on the wrong track. “fugir a” and “fugir de” both mean to escape from, as opposed to “fugir para” which is escape to”) olhares alheios, em recintos sobrelotados.
Maria Duarte, de (…she was 30 years old…) 30 anos, gestora, outra cliente de Paulo, só vê benefícios no treino caseiro. Além de (além de again: aswell as) ter dois filhos pequenos, já andava desmotivada por (straightforward “from” or “by” or “as a result of”) ir ao ginásio, porque durante um ano não conseguiu obter os resultados que pretendia. Agora dá‑se por (According to the invaluable Guia Prático, “dar-se por” means “julgar-se”, “considerar-se”, “sentir-se”) satisfeita. As duas horas que perdia no (straightforward “in the”) ginásio a fazer máquinas equivalem a (straightforward “to”) 30 minutos de exercício em casa, com os equipamentos que o Paulo traz.
O professor alerta para (straightforward “for” although I went for “a” and I think it feels like a more direction-y “to” than I would intuitively expect because even when it told me I was wrong I tried “de” and “com” and this ended up being one of the two that I were still wrong at the end) os esforços exagerados que poderão ocorrer nos ginásios. É preciso dividir o nosso corpo em partes e trabalhar uma de (um(a) de cada vez just means “one at a time”) cada vez, em sessões diferentes. Deve‑se dar descanso ao (straightforward “to the”) físico e manter uma alimentação saudável prescrita pelo (straightforward “by the”) dietista. Paulo aconselha, no (counter-intuitive use of “no” when a literal translation would push me towards “ao” for “at least”) mínimo, três meses de trabalho para (straightforward “for” in the sense of “in order to”) se obter resultados concretos. O negócio parece correr‑lhe de (de feição is an expression meaning “de forma favorável ou propícia”) feição!
For those who don’t already know, my daughter is a budding writer and somehow in between studying for her Computer Game Development Degree in Dundee, she is working on her first novel. No, I don’t know where she gets her time management skills from. Not from me. Anyway, she has started to document her process in a WordPress Blog. If you are interested in books or in writing, you might like to get in on this phenomenon now so that when they are making it into a Netflix series you can say you knew about her before she got famous.
I’ve already done a post on this, but you know what they say “You can never have too many blog posts about idiomatic expressions based around body parts”, and you know, they’re right.
Aqui está um resumo das expressões idiomáticas que usam o recurso a partes do corpo e os seus equivalentes numa língua falada pelos habitantes duma ilha húmida perto da França:
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Ter a barriga a dar horas (estar com fome)
To have a rumbling stomach
Dar o braço a torcer (Aceitar que não tem razão)
To throw in the towel
Estar pelos cabelos (Estar desesperados)
To be having kittens
Ter as costas largas (Aguentar com as responsabilidades)
To have broad shoulders
Ter as costas quentes (Ter proteção de alguém
To have friends in high places
Falar pelos cotovelos (Falar demais)
To talk the back legs off a donkey
Ter dor de cotovelo (Ter inveja, ciúmes)
To be green with envy. Esta expressão é, para mim, uma das expressões mais inéditas na língua portuguesa. O que é que os cotovelos tem a ver com ciúmes? Segundo a ciberdúvidas, (e uma professora que é especialista de cotovelologia) a expressão vem da dor intensa de bater com o cotovelo em algo, que é igual à dor de ser traído ou de não ter algo que desejamos. Pois é.
Fazer algo em cima do joelho (Fazer algo depressa)
To dash something off, or do something on the fly
Saber na ponta da língua (saber de cor, saber bem)
To know by heart (NB NOT to have something on the tip of your tongue)
Ter uma palavra debaixo da língua (estar quase a lembrar alguma coisa)
To have something on the tip of your tongue
Dar com a língua nos dentes (Contar um segredo)
To spill the beans
Estar com as mãos na massa (estar a tratar de um assunto)
To be on the case
Estar com uma mão atrás e outra a frente (Estar na miséria)
To be down in the dumps
Estar de mãos atadas (Não ter poder)
To have one’s hands tied Acho que esta expressão é a primeira que é igual em ambos os idiomas!
Ter a faca e o queijo na mão (Ter o poder ou a facilidade de fazer alguma coisa)
Hum… confesso que não conheço uma expressão equivalente*… Mas adoro esta expressão. Nunca ouvi antes.
Uma mão lava a outra (Ajudar-se um ao outro)
One hand washes the other
Meter o nariz onde não é chamado (Imiscuir-se na vida dos outros)
To stick your nose into other people’s business
Custar os olhos da cara (Ser muito caro)
To cost an arm and a leg
Ter mais olhos que barriga (Pensar que se vai comer mais do que realmente consegue comer)
To have eyes bigger than your stomach
Entrar por um ouvido e sair pelo outro (Não dar atenção)
In one ear, out the other
Estar com a pulga atrás da orelha (Estar desconfiado)
To smell a rat
Com uma perna às costas (Fazer algo facilmente)
With one arm tied behind one’s back
Fugir a sete pés (Fugir rapidamente)
To hightail it
Meter os pés pelas mãos (Confundir-se ao fazer ou dizer alguma coisa)
Put your foot in it (Interessante que em inglês metemos os nossos pés na “mouth” que soa como “mãos” em PT)
Estar com a corda na garganta (Estar numa situação desesperada)
To be up against it
Meter o rabo entre as pernas (Dar-se por vencido)
To have one’s tail between one’s legs
Fazer das tripas coração (Suportar com paciência, encher-se de coragem)
To man up, to pluck up courage, to screw one’s courage to the sticking place
*The people have spoken and they have suggested this page: “To have the upper hand”, “to hold all the aces” and “to be in the catbird seat”. The whatbird? Well, To hold all the aces is close. I don’t think either that or “To have the upper hand” are quite right though. Both suggest that you are in a position to defeat an opponent, whereas “Ter a faca e o queijo na mão” seems to be defined as having the power or ability to achieve something, more generally (ref: Priberam). Anyway, it’s better than anything I can think of, so I’m not complaining! But I had a poke around and I came across This Guy’s Very Good WordPress Post . He describes it as having all the necessary items to hand to get the job done: “Assim, sempre que alguém tem as capacidades ou os instrumentos para terminar uma tarefa, cumprir um objetivo ou obter um qualquer benefício, diz-se que essa pessoa tem a faca e o queijo na mão.” In english, if you were in this situation, what would you say? “I’ve got all my ducks in a row”.
Making another entry in my big book of reasons to be annoyed at Português em Foco.
Here’s the model for one of the idiomatic expression questions:
And after three attempts at answering the question, this is the correct answer it gave me
Obviously “á frente” in the model is a cockup, for a start, because á doesn’t exist, but swapping the order of frente and atrás too… Tsk tsk… Very bad form, old chap.
Pardon my English. I wrote a slightly bland Portuguese text earlier, wishing the new government well because, no matter what happens, that’s what we should always hope after any election, but the more I find out, the worse it seems.
I’ve been to visit my daughter so I spent most of the day on a train, trying to work, all squished up between a window and some big geezer, so I had only really caught snatches of what happened. The first thing I looked at when I woke up said the Socialists were ahead, but that turned out to be bollocks. Well not bollocks, but it must have been a cached page from earlier in the night. More up-to-date sources said the Aliança Democrática had won by a super-narrow margin, but although I could see the percentages were all roughly in line with the polls, the big shock was how many deputados Chega picked up. I knew it was grim, but when I was finally off the train, I listened to a podcast that spelled it out in more detail and it’s bloody awful. They’re still only in third place, but they got 48 seats, about a quarter of the parliament.
The actual winner isn’t decided yet, because it’s not like a British election where you find out who has won basically straight away; some of the overseas votes haven’t been counted and the president will only name a prime minister after that. Luís Montenegro, the likely PM, has assured everyone he won’t cooperate with Chega, but… Well, it’s hard to see how he can keep that promise, since even with the IL on his side he is well short of a majority. Likewise if the Socialists were to do a deal with the Bloco Esquerda, the Partido Comunista Putinista and Livre to form a sort of “Geringonça 2”, it wouldn’t secure 50% either. So Chega look like they hold a lot of power right now, like some sort of evil version of the Lib Dems in 2010. Ventura has been waving his dick around proclaiming victory, and everyone else is pretty depressed.
Part of the problem seems to have been that another, completely irrelevant right-wing party, the ADN, got a lot of votes intended for the AD, so they went from 11,000 votes to more like 100,000. This transfer of a huge block of votes away from the centre right caused the AD to lose a lot of marginal seats it would otherwise have won. Seen in this light, Montenegro’s decision to form the AD doesn’t seem so clever, doesn’t it? Gain 2 deputados from your new ally, lose christ-knows-how-many potential seats for your own party. What a master-stroke.
But it’s fair to say that even without that anomaly, any vote that sees a bunch of fart-sniffing yahoos like Chega gain one million votes should give us all pause.
I don’t really have anything intelligent to say about all this. Being an optimistic soul, I can imagine a way through all this that leads to a positive outcome, but the negative outcomes seem more likely, and I don’t know anything anyway, so if I waffle on, it is only going to create a lot of pointless noise.
Decoding names for people who don’t eat much. The list is from an article by Miguel Esteves Cardoso, reproduced in Português em Foco
Debiqueiro – “que ou o que debicar“. Debicar means peck, so this is a person who pecks at their food, which is a familiar idea of course.
Furão – literally this means a ferret, but figuratively can be a person with a pointed nose, a curious person (“nosy”, so fits with the last meaning!) and also a person who doesn’t eat much. I’m not really sure how ferrets became associated with abstemiousness, but OK.
Lambisqueiro – I’d seen the word “lambiscar“, from which this is derived, before and always assumed it was related to lamber (“to lick”) and maybe it is, but there’s no reference to licking in the definition; lambiscar just means “comer pouco“
Languinhento – according to priberam, this can mean wet, sticky, or listless, so I guess this is just more in the way of implying that a person who doesn’t eat much won’t be strong and sturdy.
Penisqueiro – derived from peniscar, which sounds like a name for a red lamborghini, but actually is just a verb roughly synonymous with lambiscar, meaning comer pouco.
He also uses plenty of words like “estranho” and “esquisito” (basically “weird”) and also talks about “fastio” to describe a person’s “repugnância pelo alimento” or “falta de apetite”
I did market research on you… Well, sort of. I did a course on AI recently and in the early stages it gets you to do some basic interactions with Chat GPT. If you haven’t tried Chat GPT, you really should, it’s a lot of fun and it’s a good idea to make friends with it now before it takes over the earth. The exercise was to try and get it writing marketing materials about a product or service. I don’t really have a service to market but I decided to tell it about this blog and have it tell me how it would turn this rambling nonsense into a going concern.
Naturally, I won’t be doing any of it, but I thought it was a fun exercise.
Here’s what it said was the “sales profile”
Buyer Persona: Portuguese Language Enthusiast
Demographic Information:
Age: 25-45
Gender: Predominantly female, but also male
Location: Mainly foreigners living in Portugal or spouses of Portuguese people in Britain
Education: Varied educational backgrounds, but with a strong interest in language learning
Psychographic Characteristics:
Language Enthusiasts: They have a genuine interest in learning European Portuguese and exploring its intricacies.
Self-Motivated Learners: They are committed to learning the language independently and seek resources to enhance their skills.
Curious and Inquisitive: They enjoy exploring the cultural and linguistic nuances of European Portuguese.
Tech-Savvy: They are comfortable using online platforms and resources for language learning.
Pain Points and Challenges:
Limited Resources: They struggle to find comprehensive European Portuguese learning materials due to the dominance of Brazilian Portuguese resources.
Lack of Community: They desire a supportive community of fellow learners who can share experiences, tips, and resources.
Cultural Integration: Foreigners living in Portugal may face challenges with cultural integration and seek guidance on cultural aspects.
Unique Selling Points:
Perspective of a Fellow Learner: Your blog provides an authentic perspective as a fellow learner, which resonates with the target audience.
In-Depth Language and Cultural Content: Your blog covers more advanced topics, offering valuable insights and discussions beyond basic language learning materials.
Comprehensive Resource Listings: Your curated lists of European Portuguese resources (audiobooks, textbooks, language hacks, online learning sites) provide convenience and save time for learners.
Marketing Strategies:
Online Forums and Groups: Engage with relevant Facebook groups, subreddits, and language learning communities to share valuable content and establish yourself as a knowledgeable resource.
Guest Blogging: Collaborate with other language learning blogs or websites to reach a wider audience and increase exposure.
Social Media Presence: Maintain active profiles on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to share language learning tips, cultural insights, and promote new blog posts.
Email Marketing: Develop a newsletter or mailing list to deliver valuable content directly to subscribers’ inboxes and nurture a community of learners.
I feel like this is pretty good – it’s obviously understood the brief. It asked me some questions beforehand but I didn’t really give it any clues as to what to say. I asked it what made it so sure language learners would mostly be of the female persuasion:
Apologies if my previous response gave the impression of certainty regarding the gender composition of your target audience. The assumption of a predominantly female audience was based on a combination of factors commonly associated with language learning and cultural interests. However, it’s important to note that gender preferences and interests can vary greatly among individuals, and it’s always recommended to rely on actual data and insights from your specific audience.
And the age? I’m a good ten years older than it’s maximum range, so that piqued my interest
Apologies for any confusion. The age range I suggested (25-45) was based on a general understanding of language learning demographics and the assumption that individuals in that age bracket may have a higher likelihood of pursuing language learning as a personal interest or for professional purposes.
Fair enough. It went on to tell me stuff about your objectives… well, that’s simple enough to guess, surely: it said proficiency, cultural integration, travel, personal enrichment and professional advancement. No huge surprises there.
But my favourite thing – as always – is to get it to come up with puns and I spent far, far too much time on that and pretty much forgot about the rest of the course. Here are some of my favourite blog titles
“Portu-Guess: Can You Decode These Tricky Portuguese Expressions?”
“Bacalhau to the Basics: A Delicious Dive into Portuguese Cuisine” (I’ve actually written one with a pretty similar name to this. Maybe Chat GPT is a dad too)
“Breaking the Mold: Portuguese Grammatical Gender – Because Rules Were Made to be ‘Quebrado'” (Genius! “Regras” is both feminine and plural, so when it says «quebrado» it’s really taking its own advice! 20p in the mealheiro for you, my lad!)
“Gender Bender: Turning the Tables on Portuguese Grammar – Let’s Make it a ‘Gênero’-us Affair!”
“Navigating the Subjungle: A Safari Through Portuguese Subjunctive Tenses” (Subjungle! Oh my god, why didn’t I think of that? “Welcome to the Subjungle” would have been a great title for this blog post)
And then there’s whatever this is:
“Wishful Conjugations: Portuguese Subjunctive Tenses Made ‘Subjimple'”
Subjimple??? This is the sort of thing that makes me understand how my wife feels when I make puns.
Chat GPT can speak portuguese just as easily as english, and even stick to european forms if you tell it to, but I get the feeling its pun capabilities are a bit limited. I prodded it to write actual portuguese puns, not just english puns that borrow portuguese words, but no matter how I phrased the question it could only write titles that hinted that the blog post contained puns, and couldn’t actually come up with any puns of its own. Buuuu!
“Caldo Verde: Uma Sopa de Trocadilhos e Sabor”
“Bacalhau ao Ponto: Pescando Risadas na Cozinha”
“Sardinhas Grelhadas e Piadas Bem Passadas”
“Pastéis de Nata: Uma Doce Poesia de Trocadilhos”
“Francesinha Divertidinha: Rindo entre Camadas Saborosas”
Oh well, it’s reassuring to know that AI won’t be advanced enough to take all our jobs for at least another 6 months.
Luso 