Category: English

Posted in English, Portuguese

Capitão Fausto – Boa Memória

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Since I’ve decided to go and see this band, I thought I’d pick a video of theirs and start translating it. The more I did, the more I regretted my choice. I should have chosen Na-Na-Nada or Amanhã ‘Tou Melhor or something a bit livelier. And something with a video that is less baffling than this one. Oh well, everything is a learning experience, and I found a couple of interesting vocabulary nuggets in this one, so here we go…

The song seems to be about getting drunk on Friday night and not remembering much but having your friends tell you what happened. Or… something. You wouldn’t know it from the video. Seriously, what is going on with the video?

Água de Cana, outra etapa da gincana
Na demora que eu procuro e que a semana nunca traz
Atraso bem o final p’ra madrugada ou meio da tarde
Só segunda é que volto a estar capaz		Cane Water*, another stage of the rat-race**
In the pause I’m looking for and the week never brings
I don’t stop till morning or the middle of the afternoon
I only start functioning again on Monday
O que eu prevejo no futuro é tão duro
Que a cabeça não hesita em dar abrigo ao temporal
Portanto escuta meu querido, sei que és muito meu amigo
Mas hoje vou voltar ao Carnaval		What I predict in the future is so hard
That my head doesn’t hesitate in sheltering the storm
So listen, dear, I know you’re a good friend
But today I’m going back to the Carnaval
Por pouco que me lembre do que acontecer
Eu sei que vai valer a pena
Não é preciso lembrar
Tenho amigos com boa memória		As little as I remember about what will happen
I know it will be worth it
I don’t need to remember
I have friends with a good memory
Por pouco que me lembre do que acontecer
Eu sei que vai valer a pena
Não é preciso lembrar
Os meus amigos contam-me a história
P’ra depois poder contar		As little as I remember about what will happen
I know it will be worth it
I don’t need to remember
I have friends with a good memory
To tell me about it later
Depois da sesta, bater a mão na testa
Só é coisa que eu evito se a memória me falhar
E por saber que é verdade, perco sempre a humildade
Se decido arrastar-me e não parar		After a nap, smack myself in the forehead
I only avoid it if my memory fails
And by knowing it’s true I always lose my humility
if I decide to drag myself along and not to stop
Se houver cortejo é p’ra ter esta fartura
Vai depressa que só dura enquanto a culpa não voltar
Com sorte a culpa não bate
A culpa não vai fazer parte da história
Que amanhã me vão contar		If there’s a cortege, it’s to have this excess
It goes quickly and only lasts while guilt doesn’t return
With luck, the guilt doesn’t strike
Guilt won’t play a part in the story
That they’ll tell me about tomorrow
Por pouco que me lembre do que acontecer
Eu sei que vai valer a pena
Não é preciso lembrar
Tenho amigos com boa memória		As little as I remember about what will happen
I know it will be worth it
I don’t need to remember
I have friends with a good memory
Por pouco que me lembre do que acontecer
Eu sei que vai valer a pena
Não é preciso lembrar
Os meus amigos contam-me a história
P’ra depois poder contar		As little as I remember about what will happen
I know it will be worth it
I don’t need to remember
I have friends with a good memory
To tell me about it later

*It’s weirdly difficult to find out what água de cana actually is. Cana usually means sugar cane, but googling it, I mostly get results relating to “caldo de cana”, a non-alcoholic drink made from cane juice, preserving some of the minerals and nutrients, justifying its claim to be a health drink even though it is sugary AF. However, it looks like the real meaning is even less healthy because água-de-cana, with hyphens, is one of the alternative names given on the Wikipedia page for Cachaça – a kind of rum made of sugar cane and used in making the cocktail known as caipirinha. Mmmm, caipirinha…

**This obviously has the same indian origin as the english word “Gymkhana” but while, in english, it tends to be an equestrian event or possibly some kind of motor sport, in portuguese it can be a series of challenges either done as a game or as part of an exam (one reddit user told me “Aqui em Portugal, alguns cursos (como, por exemplo, medicina) têm algumas avaliações em formato de gincana, em que os alunos têm que ir de sala a sala, respondendo a questões orais sobre diferentes temas.“. According to Infopédia, the word has a figurative meaning: “sucessão de peripécias ou imprevistos” so I think he’s talking about the unending flow of stuff we have to deal with every day, and comparing that to a gincana, and so I’ve picked “the rat race” as the closest English translation. It seems to fit with the rest of the lyrics, I think God, two asterisks already and I’m only on the first line. This is going to be a long slog, isn’t it***!

***No, just those two by the look of it. That was nice of them, getting both the footnotable items out of the way early. Thanks, lads.

Posted in English

Red Dawn 2025

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I’m generally not a communism appreciator, but I am quite enjoying the fact that A Vida Portuguesa is selling some of its absolutely gorgeous products in New York’s Museum of Modern Art as part of a pop-up store, including “Cola a Revolução“, a collection of stickers including “Eu Sou Comunista, Porque Não Tu?” and “Unir o Povo. esmagar o Fascismo” among others. If you’re in New York, well, first of all, commiserations for your second period of Great Darkness, and secondly, you might be interested in their stuff which is (as I may have mentioned) beautiful, and in checking out the Portuguese Design Symposium at the Pratt Institute.

Posted in English

The Careto Kid

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Já viste estes vídeos no Instagram?

Vejo-os sempre, ano após ano, e estou fascinado. Especificamente, estou fascinado pelas figuras pagãs, principalmente os “caretos”. De vez em quando, penso a mim mesmo “que tal fazer um blogue sobre isso” mas nunca cheguei a escrever. A única referencia a eles que tenho no blogue é aqui: “ I quite liked this video where she is surrounded by Caretos… wait, why don’t I have any posts about Caretos? I could have sworn I’d written about them a few months back but I can’t find it now. Oh well, add it to the to-do list.”

Mas acredita ou não, ainda está na lista de afazeres!

E ainda bem , porque acho que a minha interpretação teria sido uma caricatura. Felizmente, a grande amiga do blogue, Cristina do podcast Say It In Portuguese, já escreveu um texto que explica tuuuuuuuudo e ontem publicou uma atualização/sequela que explica aaaiiiindaaa maaaiiis do que tuuuuuudo! Vai lá ler o blogue dela e não percas tempo a ler as minhas parvoíces. Mas volta amanhã porque começa uma nova sequência de blogues sobre concertos portugueses em Londres. Combinado. Até amanhã.

TFW You’re so insecure about the terrible pun in your blog title that you have photoshop it to make sure people know what you’re driving at.

(Tendo adiado tanto, acho que a única opção é viajar para portugal e assistir a uma destas festas e escrever sobre a experiência. No próximo ano em Podence???)

Posted in English, Portuguese

Manta Para Dois

Posted on by Colin Lusk

O mundo está fodido, portanto vamos ouvir os Deolinda. Há anos que sou fã desta banda e nunca me farto de ouvir as suas músicas e sentir as emoções – neste caso a felicidade turbulenta do casal imperfeito que é o assunto da canção. Talvez, apesar de tudo, o mundo não esteja assim tão fodido.

PortuguêsInglês
Às vezes és bruto
Rezingão, tosco, inculto
Insensível, um ingrato, um ruim
Rude e casmurro
És teimoso como um burro
Mas, no fundo, és perfeito para mim		Sometimes you’re crude
Grumpy, coarse, ignorant
Insensitive, an ingrate, a meanie
Rude and pig-headed
You’re stubborn as a mule
But, deep down you’re perfect for me
Às vezes, também, eu tenho o meu feitio
E sei que levo tudo à minha frente
E por essas e por outras
Quase que nem damos conta
Das vezes que amuados
No sofá refastelados
Repartimos a manta sem incidentes		Sometimes, too, I have my ways
And I know I don’t listen too anyone*
And for those things and others
We almost never notice
The times we grumpily,
On the sofa, all snug,
Share the blanket without incident
Às vezes és parvo
Gabarola, mal-criado
É preciso muita pachorra para ti
Cromo, chico-esperto
Preguiçoso e incerto
Mas, é certo, que és perfeito para mim		Sometimes you’re foolish
Boastful, spoiled
It takes a lot of patience to deal with you
A nerd, a smartarse
Lazy and uncertain
But it’s certain that you’re perfect for me
Às vezes, também, sou curta de pavio
E respondo sempre a tudo muito a quente
E por essas e por outras
Quase que nem damos conta
Das vezes que amuados
No sofá refastelados
Repartimos a manta sem incidentes		Sometimes, too, I am short on temper
And I reply to everything heatedly
And for those things and others
We almost never notice
The times we grumpily,
On the sofa, all snug,
Share the blanket without incident
Às vezes, concedo
Que admiro em segredo
Tudo aquilo que não cantei sobre ti
Mas o que em ti me fascina
Dava uma outra cantiga
Que teria umas três horas p’ra aí		Sometimes, I admit
That I admire in secret
All those things I haven’t sung about you
But what fascinates me about you
Would make another song
That would be three hours long
Às vezes, também, sou dada ao desvario
Mas vem e passa tudo no repente
E por essas e por outras
Quase que nem damos conta
Das vezes que amuados
No sofá refastelados
Com os pés entrelaçados
E narizes encostados
Já os dois bem enrolados
Brutalmente apaixonados
Repartimos a manta sem incidentes		Sometimes, too, I am give to madness
But he comes and it all passes suddenly
And for those things and others
We almost never notice
The times we grumpily,
On the sofa, all snug,
With our feet intertwined
And our noses touching
And both of us rolled up
Brutally in love
Share the blanket without incident

*I struggled to translate this – I sweep all before me? I barge everything out of my way? Levar tudo à (sua) frente is what a tractor or a bulldozer does, so the idea you get is of someone just charging through everything and not taking account of anyone else…. but it’s difficult to boil that down to the length of a lyric!

Posted in English

Goodbye Memrise, Hello Anki

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I occasionally witter on about vocabulary apps. Followers of this saga will know I used to be a fan of Memrise when it was a straightforward flashcard app, but as they have developed it into a more rounded app they have quietly jettisoned “Mems” and moved away from the whole idea of flashcards. Flashcard decks created in the old system are now almost impossible to find and they are due to be thrown under a bus at the end of this year. Ho hum. I installed Anki Pro instead. It’s a much better flashcard app, with a much better spaced repetition system, but I was a bit cheesed off because, although I’d learned most of the Memrise courses, I had a few I’d made that I wanted to carry on with and I couldn’t really be bothered creating them all again from scratch.

Anyway, I recently came across this app, developed by some helpful dude, that lets you download old courses in a format that allows them to be imported into Anki.

The process for downloading the Memrise course is pretty straightforward – just follow the instructions on the page. Importing them seems more of a hoo-ha, but luckily I don’t really have any fancy bells and whistles like mems or audio. Also, Anki Pro* seems to be a bit easier to use than normal Anki, so it was a doddle. I’ll list the steps I used below.

Basically it’s just

  • Log into Anki Pro
  • Go to this screen (which you get to by creating a new deck then choosing “import cards!” and then “csv”)
  • Write the name of the course in the top box
  • Open the csv file you downloaded from Memrise. It will probably open in something like Microsoft Excel or whatever equivalent you have.
  • You can ignore everything but the first two columns
  • OPTIONALLY swap the two columns around. Why would you want to do this? Well, I prefer Anki to show me an english word like “babble” and then I type in “balbuciar” as a response. But when I opened the csv it had english words on the left and portuguese on the right, so I had to swap them around, otherwise it would have made me type english answers to portuguese prompts, Boooo!
  • Copy and paste the whole block of cells containing the words and their translations from the csv into the lower box on the memrise screen.
  • It will automatically take the pairings and create a course from them – check the image below, showing a course for remembering the various conjugations of ver and vir. You can see at the bottom of the picture, what it is interpreting as the prompt and answer and it seemed to get them all right first time, which is nice!
  • Make any changes you want to make (There’s a typo in the screenshot – “fior” instead of “for”, because it was like that in Memrise, and I was able to tweak that)
  • Click import

I’ll attach a csv of the ver-vir course hir i mean her, I mean here, in case you want to try it for yourself before investing the time in installing the tool. I thought it was extremely useful though and am going to hit his “buy me a coffee” link as soon as I finish this post. Buying people coffees is always a good idea! (here’s mine in case you are good at taking hints! 😊)

*Why is it called that by the way? It doesn’t cost money so what makes it more Pro than normal Anki? Oh never mind, it’s just one of life’s mysteries, I suppose!

Posted in English, Portuguese

Homework Corrected

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I published this a few days ago and the corrections to my corrections were pretty extensive so I thought rather than quietly correcting the original, I’d repost the whole thing with notes in red showing what I got wrong for ease of reference.

I hope I can quote a whole article here under… what? Fair use? It’s Manuel Cardoso, writing in the Expresso under the headline “Os portugueses lêm bem” and I’m not stealing it, I’m fixing it because – unless I am making a massive idiot of myself by misunderstanding, he has deliberately put lots of errors in it, and that’s the joke. Even the title has an error in it. It should say “leem“, not “lêm”. What’s really interesting about this is that most of these are the kinds of mistakes a native speaker would make, and they are usually different from the mistakes we made as learners. They are mistakes you make when you’ve learned a language by listening instead of by studying books.

Anyway this is a learning blog so I’m going to use it as an exercise and try to fix it. I WILL DEFINITELY GET A LOT Wrong yep so rather than erase the original text, I will put what I think are the right answers in the footnotes and then if any other students are reading this you can play along and see if you get the same answers as me, and, if not, tell me about it in the comments!

Segundo a OCDE, a literacia dos adultos do nosso país está abaixo da média. Talvez póssamos(1) refletir um pouco sobre o assunto. Dizer(2) que não confio nada nestes resultados. Houveram(3) pessoas a afirmar que não ficaram surpreendidas, mas eu fiquei perplexo. Na minha opinião pessoal (This is a redundancy too – you don’t need “pessoal” when you’re talking about your opinião) , os portugueses têm excelentes capacidades de interpretação de texto. Acreditaria neste estudo se tivesse sido feito à(4) cinquenta anos atrás, mas a verdade é que, nas últimas décadas, avançámos muito para a frente(5).

Julgo que tudo isto é muito suspeito, porque o esforço para aumentar a literacia em Portugal tem partido de ambos os dois(6) lados políticos. Este atual governo (atual is a redundancy because “este governo” implies it’s the current one alresdy) até já interviram (plural verb, singular noun – and in top of that, intervir is based in vir not ver so it should be intervier(am)) no sentido de(7) resolver os problemas de fundo da educação. Certamente que a OCDE vai retratar-se(8): os resultados devem estar errados, derivado a erros. Caso contrário, não vejo outra alternativa senão sair para fora dessa organização. Se tivesse nas minhas mãos, eu faria-o(9).

É óbvio que a divulgação deste estudo causou mau-estar(10). Esta notícia estragou-me o dia, que até estava solarengo(11). Não tenham dúvidas: condeno veemente(12) a postura da OCDE. É ofensivo que um organismo(13) internacional trate os cidadões(14) portugueses como uns analfabetos quaisqueres(15). Aonde(16) fica a dignidade? A mim, pessoalmente, admira-me que isto não tenha despoletado manifestações. Para receber resultados como estes, para a próxima nem vale a pena partilhar os dados. Hades(17) cá vir, OCDE.

Não nego, há pequenos pormenores a afinar. No que toca à avaliação dos alunos, temos de subir para cima (redundancy – subir implies you’re going up) os indicadores(18). Por exemplo, os exames de matemática deste ano podiam ter corrido mais bem(19): não houve poucas(20) notas negativas. De facto, dá vontade de perguntar uma questão (redundant – fazer or colocar uma questão. You don’t need to use perguntar with the nouns questão or pergunta in Portuguese) aos nossos estudantes: o que é que fizes-te(21) no ano lectivo(22) passado? Em todo o caso, temos concerteza(23) capacidade para inverter esta situação e sair deste ciclo vicioso(24). Confiem, OCDE: a gente vamos(25) dar a volta a isto.

(1) possamos doesn’t need an accent

(2) I think he means “diz-se” “diria”

(3) Looks like the wrong tense. Educated guess would be that he means “Haverão” No, you berk, it’s haverá because haver should always be third person singular when it’s used in this sense, as a substitute for “existir”

(4) Should be há. The “atrás” later in the sentence is redundant too, I think

(5) Hmmm…. this looks fishy too. Avançar implies the frente so that seems redundant, and “para” instead of “em” seems surprising so I think this is another mistake

(6) Tem partido seems to be OK (it looked wrong in the first version) but “ambos os dois” is a redundancy of course.

(7) Not a grammar error, I think but seems like a misuse of the expression “In the sense of”. It gets misused a lot in english too.

(8) Surprisingly not an error. Retratar-se can mean tratar-se novamente. Pre-AO it would have been retractar-se But it has been changed. Hm… Confusing. OK, I’m blaming the AO for this. It’s like para all over again.

(9) Looks like we’re in mesoclise territory: Fá-lo-ia

(10) Mal-estar

(11) I’m starting to get paranoid and feel like I’m missing loads. I don’t quite know what the joke is here but this is such an odd word that it has to be a wrong. I know it can mean sunny, but its just not a word I’ve heard before so I smell shenanigans.

(12) Ha! It hadn’t really occurred to me but although veemente is an adjective, the presence of the “-mente” at the end makes it look like an adverb. It should be veementemente! Vehemently.

(13) Organização, presumably

(14) Cidadãos

(15) Popular general knowledge quiz answer, which is the only word in the language that is pluralised in the middle, not the end, quaisquer, not quaisqueres!

(16) Just onde

(17) Getting a bit lost here. I know it’s quite common that people write “há des” instead of “hás de” but I haven’t seen it without a hyphen so maybe he really means Hades is coming. Oh wait, no, apparently people really do write Hades – example here. The sentence immediately before this one seems impenetrable and I feel like there’s something wrong with it but I don’t know what

(18) So it looks like the indicators/standards have to go up but he starts off saying “we have to go up…” so I think maybe it’s just that the verb doesn’t match what I take as being the subject of the verb…?

(19) Melhor

(20) There weren’t few… seems like a double negative, no? (OK, looking at it again, it’s a triple negative There were not a few bad marks meaning there were a lot of bad marks, which is in keeping with what he’s saying. Fair enough. I’m my opinion, this many switchnacksnin a sentence is bad form because it’s confusing but fair enough, not an actual error!)

(21) Fizeste is a common mistake apparently (see here for example) but it’s been pointed out that he might be addressing all the students at once, instead of one at a time, and reading for the vós form: fizestes. Not how o imagined it, but yep i can see that.

(22) Looks like a pre-AO spelling

(23) Com certeza

(24) The expression is “Circulo vicioso” not “ciclo vicioso”

(25) A gente takes third person singular verb endings: a gente vai, not vamos

Posted in English

Podding Along

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I’ve mentioned the podcast Say It In Portuguese a few times, mainly because its creator, Cristina, coached me through C1 and C2, but also before that, because it’s just a very good podcast for more advanced learners who want to explore the huge range of expressions in Portuguese.

Anyway, I wrote a blog post recently about the expression “Cuspido e Escarrado” and joked that I was copying the style of the podcast, and… Long story short, it ended up being an episode! I adapted it for the format, and put a sound effect in place of the gif, and it sounds OK, though I say so myself. It’s here if you want to listen:

Say it in Portuguese: Cuspido e Escarrado

By the way, full disclosure, when I was looking around for the blog post that became the podcast, I found an older post where I’d mentioned the phrase earlier. It was only as a sidebar to a post discussing a different expression, “Cara de um, focinho do outro“. I’d completely forgotten about this. Having a terrible memory makes it hard to learn languages but it does have the advantage that I can be surprised by a new and interesting fact even after having written a blog post about it!

Anyway, in the earlier blog, I’d given a slightly different explanation: that it comes from. “esculpido em carrara” but the sources I looked at this time around described that origin as “less likely” which is why I didn’t mention it in the later one.

In truth, these sorts of etymological explanations are a lot of fun to speculate about but often they are just attempts by modern speakers to explain the inexplicable. Sometimes expressions are just weird and they don’t make sense, so it’s best to treat the explanations with caution!

Anyway, now that I’ve recorded a podcast about it, hopefully I’ll remember it this time, but don’t be surprised if I write another blog about the same expression next year and seem just as amazed by it then as I was last week!

Posted in English, Portuguese

It’s a Joke But it’s Also Homework

Posted on by Colin Lusk

(Update: corrected version here)

I hope I can quote a whole article here under… what? Fair use? It’s Manuel Cardoso, writing in the Expresso under the headline “Os portugueses lêm bem” and I’m not stealing it, I’m fixing it because – unless I am making a massive idiot of myself by misunderstanding, he has deliberately put lots of errors in it, and that’s the joke. Even the title has an error in it. It should say “lêem”, not “lêm”. What’s really interesting about this is that most of these are the kinds of mistakes a native speaker would make, and they are usually different from the mistakes we made as learners. They are mistakes you make when you’ve learned a language by listening instead of by studying books.

Anyway this is a learning blog so I’m going to use it as an exercise and try to fix it. I WILL DEFINITELY GET A LOT WRONG so rather than erase the original text, I will put what I think are the right answers in the footnotes and then if any other students are reading this you can play along and see if you get the same answers as me, and, if not, tell me about it in the comments!

Segundo a OCDE, a literacia dos adultos do nosso país está abaixo da média. Talvez póssamos(1) refletir um pouco sobre o assunto. Dizer(2) que não confio nada nestes resultados. Houveram(3) pessoas a afirmar que não ficaram surpreendidas, mas eu fiquei perplexo. Na minha opinião pessoal, os portugueses têm excelentes capacidades de interpretação de texto. Acreditaria neste estudo se tivesse sido feito à(4) cinquenta anos atrás, mas a verdade é que, nas últimas décadas, avançámos muito para a frente(5).

Julgo que tudo isto é muito suspeito, porque o esforço para aumentar a literacia em Portugal tem partido(6) de ambos os dois lados políticos. Este atual governo até já interviram no sentido de(7) resolver os problemas de fundo da educação. Certamente que a OCDE vai retratar-se(8): os resultados devem estar errados, derivado a erros. Caso contrário, não vejo outra alternativa senão sair para fora dessa organização. Se tivesse nas minhas mãos, eu faria-o(9).

É óbvio que a divulgação deste estudo causou mau-estar(10). Esta notícia estragou-me o dia, que até estava solarengo(11). Não tenham dúvidas: condeno veemente(12) a postura da OCDE. É ofensivo que um organismo(13) internacional trate os cidadões(14) portugueses como uns analfabetos quaisqueres(15). Aonde(16) fica a dignidade? A mim, pessoalmente, admira-me que isto não tenha despoletado manifestações. Para receber resultados como estes, para a próxima nem vale a pena partilhar os dados. Hades(17) cá vir, OCDE.

Não nego, há pequenos pormenores a afinar. No que toca à avaliação dos alunos, temos de subir para cima os indicadores(18). Por exemplo, os exames de matemática deste ano podiam ter corrido mais bem(19): não houve poucas(20) notas negativas. De facto, dá vontade de perguntar uma questão aos nossos estudantes: o que é que fizes-te(21) no ano lectivo(22) passado? Em todo o caso, temos concerteza(23) capacidade para inverter esta situação e sair deste ciclo vicioso(24). Confiem, OCDE: a gente vamos(25) dar a volta a isto.

(1) possamos doesn’t need an accent

(2) I think he means “diz-se”

(3) Looks like the wrong tense. Educated guess would be that he means “Haverão”

(4) Should be há. The “atrás” later in the sentence is redundant too, I think

(5) Hmmm…. this looks fishy too. Avançar implies the frente so that seems redundant, and “para” instead of “em” seems surprising so I think this is another mistake

(6) Tem partido can’t be right but I’m not sure what it’s meant to be

(7) Not a grammar error, I think but seems like a misuse of the expression “In the sense of”. It gets misused a lot in english too.

(8) They’re going to draw a portrait of themselves? Unlikely. I think the verb should be retrair.

(9) Looks like we’re in mesoclise territory: Fá-lo-ia

(10) Mal-estar

(11) I’m starting to get paranoid and feel like I’m missing loads. I don’t quite know what the joke is here but this is such an odd word that it has to be a wrong. I know it can mean sunny, but its just not a word I’ve heard before so I smell shenanigans.

(12) Ha! It hadn’t really occurred to me but although veemente is an adjective, the presence of the “-mente” at the end makes it look like an adverb. It should be veementemente! Vehemently.

(13) Organização, presumably

(14) Cidadãos

(15) Popular general knowledge quiz answer, which is the only word in the language that is pluralised in the middle, not the end, quaisquer, not quaisqueres!

(16) Just onde

(17) Getting a bit lost here. I know it’s quite common that people write “há-des” instead of “hás-de” but I haven’t seen it without an apostrophe so maybe he really means Hades is coming. The sentence immediately before this one seems impenetrable and I feel like there’s something wrong with it but I don’t know what

(18) So it looks like the indicators/standards have to go up but he starts off saying “we have to go up…” so I think maybe it’s just that the verb doesn’t match what I take as being the subject of the verb…?

(19) Melhor

(20) There weren’t few… seems like a double negative, no?

(21) Fizeste.

(22) Looks like a pre-AO spelling

(23) Com certeza

(24) The expression is “Circulo vicioso” not “ciclo vicioso”

(25) A gente takes third person singular verb endings: a gente vai, no vamos

Posted in English, Portuguese

Se Dançar é Só Depois

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Ana Lua Caiano is coming to London for a gig in May with another musician, Baby Volcano. BV seems to do a lot of songs in english and even (shudder) Spanish, so I might need to bring earplugs for that one. Is this any good though? Let’s have a listen, translate it, and decide…

Se dançar é só depois Para já, já estou morta
Morta para ir dormir Dormir p’ra amanhã voltar
Voltar a acordar
Com ideias mal cozidas Mal cozidas p’ra empratar
Numa folha de papel
Ai, ai, ai eu
Acordei feita num oito Dormi com os pés no chão
Para ser mais fácil levantar
Ai, ai, ai eu
Nunca cortes meus delírios
Quero esquecer minha farda P’ra não ir mais trabalhar
Ai, meu amor		If I dance, it’ll only be later. I’m dead at the moment
Dead to sleep, to sleep to come back tomorrow
To wake again
With half-cooked ideas, half cooked to plate up
On a piece of paper
Ai ai ai I
Woke up in a mess*, I slept with my feet on the ground
To make it easier to get up
Ai ai ai, I
never cut my delirium
I want t forget my uniform so I’ll never have to work
Ai, my darling
Quando nós vivermos juntos Ai, meu amor
Quando o quarto for p’ra dois
Ai, espera-me à noite, amor, Espera-me à noite
De dia nunca tenho
Tempo p’ra dançar
E se dançar tem que ser Devagarinho
E se dançar tem que ser Bem devagar
Ai, porque o meu corpo, amor, E o teu corpo
Nossos corpos
Já só sabem maquinar
Se dançar é só depois Para já, já estou morta
Morta para ir dormir Dormir p’ra amanhã voltar
Voltar a acordar
Com ideias mal cozidas Mal cozidas p’ra empratar
Numa folha de papel
Ai, ai, ai eu
Ai, a sorte não me encontra
Pensa que já estou morta
Guarda meu ouro p’ra outro
Ai, ai, ai eu
Os meus pés acordam frios Minhas mãos a encolher
A sorte não dá de comer
Ai, meu amor		When we live together Ai my darling
When the bedroom is for two
Ai, wait for me at night, love, wait for me at night
In the daytime I don’t have
Time to dance
And if I dance it has to be slowly
And if I dance it has to be really slow
AI, because my body, love, and your body
Our bodies
Only know how to be machines
If I dance, it’ll only be later. I’m dead at the moment
Dead to sleep, to sleep to come back tomorrow
To wake again
With half-cooked ideas, half cooked to plate up
On a piece of paper
Ai ai ai I
Ai, luck can’t find me
It thinks I’m dead already
It keeps my gold for someone else
AI ai ai, I
My feet wake up cold, my hands clenching
Luck doesn’t feed me
Ai, my love
Se conseguirmos viver juntos Ai, meu amor
Se o meu quarto aumentar
Ai, espera-me à noite, amor, Espera-me à noite
Continuo sem ter
Tempo p’ra dançar
Se dançar é só depois Para já, já estou morta
Morta para ir dormir Dormir p’ra amanhã voltar
Voltar a acordar
Com ideias mal cozidas Mal cozidas p’ra empratar
Numa folha de papel
Ai, ai, ai eu
Acordei feita num oito
Dormi com os pés no chão P’ra ser mais fácil levantar
Ai, ai, ai eu
Nunca cortes meus delírios
Quero esquecer minha farda P’ra não ir mais trabalhar
Ai, ai, ai eu
Acordei feita num oito
Dormi com os pés no chão P’ra ser mais fácil levantar
Ai, ai, ai eu
Nunca cortes meus delírios
Quero esquecer minha farda
Quero ir mas é dançar		If we manage to live together, ai my love
If my bedroom gets bigger
Ai, wait for me at night, love, wait for me at night
I still don’t have
Time to dance
If I dance, it’ll only be later. I’m dead at the moment
Dead to sleep, to sleep to come back tomorrow
To wake again
With half-cooked ideas, half cooked to plate up
On a piece of paper
Ai ai ai I
Woke up in a mess*, I slept with my feet on the ground
To make it easier to get up
Ai ai ai, I
Never cut my delirium
I want t forget my uniform so I’ll never have to work
Ai ai ai I
Woke up in a mess*, I slept with my feet on the ground
To make it easier to get up
Ai ai ai, I
Never cut my delirium
I want t forget my uniform
I just want to go dancing

* Feito num oito seems not to mean you’re not literally in a figure eight, you’re just tired, listless, messed up, like feito ao bife.

Hm, I’m afraid that just left me cold. It didn’t really have anything to recommend it at all. I might go anyway because I like going to portuguese shows but I have to admit it’s not something that excites me, so… I dunno.