Tag: humour

Posted in English, Portuguese

Piadas Secas

Posted on by Colin Lusk
A tree painting Bob Ross
Source

I tried to make a joke in a discussion about a previous post and it didn’t work so here’s a very laboured discussion of when and whether “In Soviet Russia” jokes can work in portuguese. It was always going to be a challenging text and, sure enough, I made lots of errors. For me, the tricky part if how to emphasise the reversal at the end. I want it to land hard on the “you” at the end. I’m sure I’ve seen this done in portuguese by doubling up in the pronoun – like “Parece-me a mim…” but I don’t think I really stuck the landing on any of these attempts.

Este texto é uma tentativa de recriar uma piada antiga. Tentei copiar o formato duma resposta a um comentário da Dani, mas acho que não funciona.

Em inglês, o modelo é assim (imaginem que o falante é um russo num programa americano). “Here in America, is very good, everyone watch television. In old country, television watch you!”(1)

Muitos destas piadas não funcionam se forem traduzidas literalmente: “Nos Estados Unidos podes sempre encontrar uma festa. Na Rússia, o partido encontra-te sempre a ti” é engraçado em inglês porque “festa” e “partido” traduzem-se ambos* como “party”, mas em português, nem por isso.

O mais difícil, acho eu, é como enfatizar a inversão dos pronomes. Acho que preciso de usar a forma Verbo hífen pronome indireto [a] pronome subjetivo. Vamos experimentar alguns…

“Nos Estados Unidos, toda a gente vê televisão. Na Rússia** Soviética a televisão vê-te a ti”

Ou talvez “…vê-nos a nós”

No Reino Unido, comem-se nabos. Na Rússia, os nabos comem-te comem-vos a você

Ou talvez “…tu comes nabos…” ***

Hum… A forma “você” parece demasiado formal para uma piada…?

Em Portugal não se tem bico-de-obra, bico-de-obra tem-te a ti****.

Em português, conjugam-se os verbos. Na Rússia soviética, os verbos conjugam-te a ti.

O que acham? O Bruno Nogueira anda preocupado que eu roubo-lhe o emprego?

(1) A conjugação do verbo em inglês está errada, mas vou ignorar. Se as minhas flexões todas estão erradas, não é deliberado, é um lapso.

* Ambos (“both”) goes after the verb, unlike in English.

**The corrector suggested changing this to ‘na União Sovietica’ which is technically right, but I think the joke format tends to be “In Soviet Russia”, not “In the Soviet Union”

*** Although você is formal, it can be used in jokes if the formality is relevant to the situation. It would have been better in the tu form though.

**** This was the original joke I tried to make, leading to my deciding to write this post. When I first tried it, in the reddit comments under a previous text, it looked like this:

And in case you’re wondering who João Neves is, well, translate his name…
Posted in English

Expressões Idiomáticas, Climáticas e Palavráticas com Preposições hum… Aleatoriaticas?

Posted on by Colin Lusk

So here are a couple of videos from the same guy. They are quite sweary so if you have a portuguese relative within earshot, you might want to use headphones. I was interested in the prepositions more than the swearing and I’ll tell you why when you’ve watched them. In fact, the whole post is quite sweary, even the English bits. If you are a child, reading this, please ask your parents to hide your device until your eighteenth birthday and then carry on reading.

OK, ready? Good. Happy birthday, by the way.

As you can see, he’s pretty funny. In each case he’s giving versions of the same expression:

Não faz frio nem orvalho mas está a chover para caralho.

Não faz chuva nem orvalho mas está um frio do caralho

If you don’t already know, caralho is one of the rudest words in the language. But what’s going on with those prepositions just in front of each? Why is it para in the first instance and do in the second? I threw the question open to the floor.

In both cases we’re using the bad word to emphasise how strongly we feel about the situation, but you lead into it with para when what you are emphasising is a verb. “Esta a chover para caralho”, “Os ovos andam caros para caralho”, for example.

On the other hand, if its a noun you’re emphasising, you lead in with do: “Está um frio do caralho”, “Cão do caralho passa toda a noite a ladrar”

Caralho!

It’s hard to draw a direct analogy to English swearing, not least because we wouldn’t even say “está um frio…” (“it’s a cold”). We’d treat frio as an adjective, not as a noun. But I’m sure you’ll be familiar with the fact that swear words are pretty flexible in how they’re used. So you could have ‘It’s cold as fuck” or “It’s raining like fuck” or “It’s a huge fucking storm”. Portuguese seems to have a rule about how the caralho is linked to the thing it’s referring to though so it seems to be one of those rare cases where portuguese is less complicated than English.

Posted in English

Cats vs Dogs

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Spotted on twitter and laughed my head off.

I think it’s Brazilian, by the way. Not that different though. I think in european portuguese they would have dropped the “eu” in the first cat dialogue and used cão in place of cachorro. Obviously the punctuation is all over the place but that’s memes for you!

Posted in English, Portuguese

Apparently, That Was All Wrong

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I wrote a post a couple of days ago, based around a joke. I was a bit surprised because the person who corrected my text said that I had made hardly any mistakes and that, contrary to what I thought, the joke worked well because “levar (…) ao jardim zoológico” and “levar (…) para o jardim zoológico” were interchangeable.

Well, that was all bollocks. The person in question was Brazilian and not very “picuinhas” at all. I had, of course, made plenty of errors, and the joke doesn’t work either. Sorry if any of you told it at a party and were met with blank stares. Taking a penguin to the zoo on a visit and taking it to be permanently housed at the zoo are too different in Portuguese for this misunderstanding to arise.

Um agente da PSP viu um homem num carro com 6 pinguins no banco de trás. Fez-lhe sinal para encostar o carro.

– Isto não pode ser, disse o polícia. O senhor tem de levar estes pinguins para o jardim zoológico.

O homem concordou e arrancou em direção ao zoológico.

No dia seguinte, o agente viu o mesmo homem a conduzir na Avenida Almirante Reis* com os mesmos pinguins. Mais uma vez, fez-lhe sinal para que estacionasse e aproximou-se do carro, parando várias vezes para evitar os ciclistas.

– Ó meu senhor, o que é que está a acontecer? Eu disse-lhe ontem que tinha de levar estas aves para o zoológico zoológico.

-Sim, disse o motorista. E curtiram muito. Hoje vamos para o cinema.

*this bit about the cyclists on the Avenida Almirante Reis is irrelevant and I only put not in to demonstrate my familiarity with urban planning controversies in Lisboa.

Posted in English, Portuguese

O Jardim Zoológico

Posted on by Colin Lusk

(This post is completely wrong – I’ve posted an update here and I suggest you ignore this and read that instead!)

Here’s a joke I translated and asked if it worked. The person who marked it said it was fine, but he also offered very few corrections so maybe he’s just an easy-going type who makes allowances. Anyway, the reason I thought it would flop was the difference between “levar ao jardim zoológico” (take them to visit) and “levar para o jardim zoológico” (take them for the long term) would make it hard for a misunderstanding like this to occur. But he seemed to like it so maybe its OK. Try telling it to a Portuguese person and see what their reaction is.

Um agente da PSP viu um homem num carro com 6 pinguins no banco de trás. Indicou-lhe para encostar o carro.

– Isso não dá, disse o polícia. O senhor deve levar estes pinguins para o jardim zoológico.

O homem concordou e arrancou em direção ao jardim.

No dia seguinte, o agente viu o mesmo homem a conduzir na Avenida Almirante Reis* com os mesmos pinguins. Indicou-lhe mais uma vez para se estacionar e aproximou-se ao carro, pausando de vez em quando para evitar as ciclistas.

– Ó meu senhor, o que é que está a acontecer? Eu disse-lhe ontem que devia levar estas aves para o zoológico zoológico.

-Sim, disse o motorista. E curtiram muito. Hoje vamos para o cinema.

*this bit about the cyclists on the Avenida Almirante Reis is irrelevant and I only put not in to demonstrate my familiarity with urban planning controversies in Lisboa.