Spotify keeps recommending this song to me, and it’s a great choice! It’s worth noting before we start that the title is an example of a very ambiguous sort of portuguese sentence. Of course we’re used to having no subject pronoun, and but the tu form of the imperative tense usually overlaps with the ele/ela form of the present tense, meaning you could translate this as a statement “She/he/it keeps messing up my plans” or as an instruction, “Keep messing up my plans!” Since love songs addressed to an individual are more common than songs complaining about minor annoyances, I generally read it as the latter, but I haven’t listened closely enough to really know for sure
| Portuguese | English |
|---|---|
| Ah faltam-me as saudades e os ciúmes Já, tenho a minha conta de serões serenos Quero é ir dançar | I’ve lost all my sorrows and my jealousies I’ve had my share of quiet nights in* I just want to go dancing |
| Sei por onde vou É o melhor caminho Não deixo nada ao acaso Por favor, anda trocar-me o passo | I know where I’m going It’s the best path I’m leaving nothing to chance Please, trip me up** |
| Tenho uma rotina Pra todos os dias Há de durar muitos anos Por favor, anda estragar-me os planos | I have a routine For every day It’ll probably go on for years Please, mess up my plans |
| Tira os livros da ordem certa Deixa a janela do quarto aberta Faz-me esquecer que amanhã vou trabalhar | Take my books out of their order Leave the bedroom window open Make me forget that I’m going to work tomorrow |
| Ah, faltam-me as saudades e os ciúmes Já, tenho a minha conta de serões serenos Quero ir dançar | I’ve lost all my sorrows and my jealousies I’ve had my share of quiet nights in I just want to go dancing |
| Um, dois… Ah, faltam-me as saudades e os ciúmes Já, tenho a minha conta de serões serenos Tardes tontas, manhãs mecânicas Eu quero é ir dançar | One two, I’ve lost all my sorrows and my jealousies I’ve had my share of quiet nights in stupefied afternoons, predictable mornings I just want to go dancing |
*Serão doesn’t come up often as a noun, it’s more usually the third person plural future tense of ser, but it’s usually some kind of nocturnal activity – a party or some night time work. I’ve gone for translating serão serena as “quiet night in” because it makes the most sense in the context of the following line.
**Wow, “trocar-me o passo” seems hard to translate. In fact, I could probably break this footnote out into a whole blog, but… Anyway, literally, he’s saying “change my step”, but what could he mean? Well I checked Priberam and it certainly isn’t the same as “e troca o passo”, which is just a way of talking about decades when you don’t know the specific year. As I see it it can only be one of two things (1) something like “shake me up” or snap me out of my routine; based on the preceding lines, he says he has carefully planned everything out, but he wants the person he’s singing to to cause him to do something completely different, walk a different path, or just generally throw him off balance or (2) based on the fact that he’s going dancing and passo can mean a dance step as well as a walking step, maybe he’s saying he wants to trade dance steps with her – in other words, he’s just saying “dance with me”. And I guess there’s a third option (3) both: it’s intended to have a double meaning. I think I’m leaning towards option 3. It sounds like the main meaning of the expression is meaning 1, but he likely chose it for its proximity to dancing. I can only find one other place on the internet where the same expression is used in the first person, and it’s in a poem called Forte on this page, and it definitely sounds like it fits definition 1.
Troca-me o passo,
Faz uma revolução,
Põe o mundo inteiro em convulsão…
and there’s another example in the third person in this story about Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington in Lisbon
Ella não queria entrevistas. Por isso fugiu para o carro que a aguardava. Mas o repórter trocou-lhe o passo. E a conversa começou fria, sem balanço nem ritmo
This doesn’t sound quite as earth-shattering but there’s definitely a sense that the reporter has interfered with her plan to escape.
Swapping the tense I get a few more hits including a whole song about it (but without an indirect object) and this page which mentioned the Priberam definition but adds
A expressão também pode ser utilizada literalmente e significar trocar de pé, para acertar ou desalinhar o passo com outra pessoa.
and just to bring it full circle, this is again in the context of dance! So I googled trocar de pé and came up with a couple of videos of shuffle dance tutorials but also podiatrists, people worried about tripping on escalators and all sorts of things!
Oh well, it might be that I can never be fully certain about the exact meaning but it seems pretty clear in the context of the wider song, what he’s driving at! I’ve opted for “trip me up” because it seems the closest equivalent, being both foot-based and also an invitation to cause problems.
Luso 