Deus

Translation commentary

Andreia Fernandes 

At first sight, this text seemed quite easy to translate, since it was written in a very straightforward way and using everyday language. However, as with every translation, there were some difficulties associated with it. One cannot take into account only the most direct translation, but must instead reflect upon what seems to correspond better, in one’s culture, to the meaning intended with such and such words – never forgetting to keep the quick-witted and playful rhythm throughout. What is the true intention behind the use of, let’s say, “understand” – to comprehend, to realise, to perceive, to sense…? How do I choose between those synonyms? They all have slightly different connotations, but sometimes it seems to me it all (inevitably) comes down to personal preference. And what can we say about expressions that do not have an equivalent in the language of translation – how can I communicate their meaning, or replicate a certain formal feature/pattern? Another interesting difficulty is when the language of translation has, for example, a greater variety of verb tenses, grammatical persons, genders, etc., which the original language melts into just one form – this has happened here as well.

All in all, I have aimed at an adequate translation, trying to remain faithful to the original text, and I believe the result to be quite satisfactory. There are one or two expressions which I am not fully content with, but I really could not find a better way to translate them.

I will proceed to present my commentaries (which are not, however, as detailed as I had wished them to be), organizing them according to their position in each paragraph.

First paragraph:

     - Sometimes, it was hard to tell which verb tense I should employ, since there is a wider variety of verb flexions in Portuguese, with their corresponding variations in meaning. In “I looked up to the crucifix and thought”, I wondered whether I should use “olhei (…) pensei”, which conveys a specific action in the past that is already finished (the pretérito perfeito do indicativo, which is equivalent to the originally employed past simple), or “olhava (…) pensava”, which conveys a certain regularity, a reoccurrence, something more long-lasting (the pretérito imperfeito do indicativo, which is equivalent in meaning to the past continuous but is a different flexion that gives it a hint of present-ness – just like saying “used to [infinitive verb]”). I went with the last option, because I think it best corresponds to the meaning the author was trying to deliver. It’s also worth mentioning that the motion in “looked up” is lost in translation, as the cumbersomeness generated by adding that information is greater than the importance of it (“eu olhava para cima, para o crucifixo”, which means “I looked up, towards the crucifix”; or “eu olhava para o crucifixo acima”, which means “I looked to the crucifix above”).

     - “it was a bizarre thing for women to”. There are many options for translating this, not only in terms of the variety of ways in which you can say “it was a bizarre thing” – “a bizarria que era” (“bizarria” is the corresponding noun to the adjective “bizarre”, meaning something which or someone who is bizarre), “que era (uma coisa / algo) bizarro (/a)”, “o quão bizarro era”, “no (/a coisa) bizarro (/a) que era”, etc. –, but also in terms of the meaning behind the preposition “for” followed by “to”, which might either convey the meaning of “for” (as in “it was bizarre for women”, “women found it to be bizarre”; which might translate to, e.g., “era bizarro para as mulheres”) or that of “that” (as in “it was bizarre that women”, “the fact that women did so was bizarre”, which might translate to, e.g., “era bizarro as mulheres”). I have finally decided to translate it into “na bizarria que era as mulheres”. By doing so, I have suppressed the preposition “for” (“para”), since I believe the meaning intended by the author (or at least the one that makes the most sense in my view) in using it was in its essence “that”.

     - “so much more” can be rigorously translated to “muitíssima mais” (“muitíssima” being the superlative degree of “muita”, which means “much” – thus indicating “so much”). At first, it sounded slightly bulky to me, and I considered replacing it with “ainda mais” (“even more”); but then I realised saying “so much more” was also equally bulky, in the sense that the author uses three words, each one of them indicating the exact same thing – a large amount. So I have decided, at last, to employ “muitíssima” as well.

     - “washing-up” has a certain ambiguity and double meaning to it, which is somewhat lost in its translation, “lavar a loiça”, since it directly references the crockery, cutlery, etc. (“loiça”). However, I could not find a better way to translate it – I could have simply gone for “lavagens” (“washes”/”washings”), but it lacks the specific implication of washing crockery, cutlery, etc. in “washing-up”; so I have decided, at last, to go with the first option.

     - I have lost the alliteration “prize and praise”, as I could not find any way to recreate it, and substituted it for “glorificam e exaltam” (which translates more specifically to “glorify and exalt”, and which I believe to fit the original meaning well, given the variety of nuances).

Second paragraph:

     - “for being skipped in shop queues” = “por ser ultrapassada nas filas das lojas”. I could have gone with “omitida” (“ommited”) or “ignorada” (“ignored”), but “ultrapassada” (which means “bypassed”) is the term commonly used for these situations, and to use another word would be a bit too formal for the quick-witted and somewhat casual writing style of the author.

     - “looking like a heap” is a hard expression to translate, since it does not have an equivalent. However, it is common, in an everyday language, to say things like “parecer-se miserável/uma miséria” (“to look miserable/a misery”), “parecer-se lastimável/uma lástima” (which is more along the lines of shame and pity), “parecer-se um bicho-do-mato” (which literally translates to “wild or feral animal” and in this context means someone who does not look after their appearance), “parecer-se um traste” (“to look like a rag, a mess, an outcast”; it is somewhat pejorative and not very commonly used) – or even “parecer-se um sem-abrigo” (“to look like a homeless person”), in the frame of an ordinary urban dialect among younger generations. These all have the same meaning of “looking like a heap”. I have opted for “parecer-se como um bicho-do-mato”, since, alike the original expression, it creates an image of some sort, whereas the other options where either too direct in meaning or not very common.

Third paragraph:

      - I have translated “child” into “filha” instead of into “criança”, which is its direct translation. The reason for doing so is that “criança” does not imply the quality of offspring as “child” does – instead, it mostly refers to a human being of young age, to childhood. That quality can only be found in “filho(s)” and “filha(s)” (“son(s)” and “daughter(s)”, respectively) – and indeed in Portuguese it is mostly said “my son”, “I have a daughter”, “they have sons”, and not “my child”, “I have a child”, “they have children” (it might be said, but it sounds a bit strange and cumbersome). It is noteworthy that the young age of the “child” is not lost since it is implied by other elements in the text. At the end of the paragraph, however, I have opted to go with “criança”, as it sounds equally natural to its alternative, “filha”, and even better in this context, in my opinion.

     - I had some difficulty in choosing which verb tenses to employ in “nothing I believed could explain this”. Even though the events being narrated clearly belong to a specific and finished past, the use of the pronoun “this” brings them, to some extent, to the present: it is as though she has “looked” and she has “realised”, both in that specific moment in time, but even now she still “believes” and those beliefs still “can’t” explain it. I have decided to translate “believed” to “acreditava”, which is the pretérito imperfeito do indicativo – again, synonym in terms of meaning to the past continuous and/or to “used to…”, and thus supporting the nature of a belief (which does not exist only in a clearly defined moment) as well as opening up to the possibility of that belief still existing in a present time. Regarding the flexion “could”, I could translate it to “podia” or “poderia”. These are practically equivalent in use; however, the first one is in the pretérito imperfeito do indicativo (just as “acreditava”), whereas the later is in the conditional simples, which expresses probability, a hypothesis. Therefore, I believe “poderia” to better substitute “could”, in the sense that there was a probability (denied as it might have been) of her beliefs supporting the facts previously stated.

     - “embarrassing” contains a slight allusion to reverence, to inspiration. Although its most straightforward translations are “embaraçoso”, “vergonhoso” (“shameful”); “constrangedor” (“awkward”) and “perturbador” (“distressful”), words like “temor”, “reverência” and “imponência” are the ones which encompass such subtle meaning. I have translated it to “Foi um momento de reverência”, instead of using the adjective “temoroso” (of rare use) or “temível”, which mean something more along the lines of “fearsome”; I have also chosen it over “imponência”, which might be translated to “magnificence”.

     - To say “I look into her eyes (…) I think I saw her soul (…) a part of her” generates a repetition of the word “her”, which translates to “sua” (possessive pronoun) or “dela” (a contraction of “de” + “ela” and equivalent of “sua”). Although this repetition might be overlooked in English (since there needs to be a pronoun accompanying every verb flexion, and the amount of pronouns and determiners for each grammatical person is little – all of which makes their repetition typical), it would not however be overlooked in Portuguese. If we were to say “os olhos dela (…) a alma dela (…) uma parte dela”, it would sound strange to hear that word repeated in such a short amount of time, since we have different verb flexions for each grammatical person (and therefore it is usual to suppress them), and because we have a greater variety of pronouns and determiners.Thus, for the sake of non-repetition and variety, I have changed “a alma dela” to “a sua alma”. The reason why I most readily chose “dela” and not “sua” is because the later sounds a bit more formal and solemn and, therefore, slightly unfit for such a straightforward writing style as the author’s.

Fourth paragraph:

     - The sequence “in the middle of night, and at the beginning of the night, and at dawn” has been replicated in the translation: “a meio da noite, e ao início da noite, e de madrugada”. It was a bit hard to decide which word to translate “dawn” to – if whether to “madrugada” or “amanhecer”. Both words mean “dawn”; however, “madrugada” often also includes the late hours of the night (we could say, from 3-4 a.m. until the sun starts to rise). I have decided to go with that word, since it makes a more direct reference to night-time, and thus helps drawing a line throughout the above-mentioned sequence.

     - “How would she turn out?” is a hard expression to translate, since there is not one that quite corresponds to it. One could say “como é que ela iria crescer?” (“how would she grow up?”), “em quem é que ela se iria tornar?” (“who would she become?”), “quem é que ela seria?” (“who would she be?”); but in all of them the subject has a slightly more active meaning than in the original. Out of these, I opted to go with the second one, as it seems to me to better correspond to what the author intended to convey. The same happens with “What would she do?”, which can be translated to “o que é que ela iria fazer?”, but it seems to lose some of its broadness. I am not fully satisfied with either of these two translations, but I had to adopt them nonetheless, since they were the best I found to communicate the original idea.

     - “the longest time” also does not seem to have an equivalent expression. To say “imenso tempo” (“a lot of time”) might keep its general meaning but loses the sense of never-ending. Therefore, I have translated it to “uma eternidade”. Its translation, “an eternity”, might seem odd in the way that it has an indefinite article preceding it; however, it is a common expression in Portuguese and it has the same meaning as “the longest time”.

     - I thought about translating the word “fate” to “fado”, a typical and quite unique Portuguese word. However, it is slightly antiquated to use it (and it carries with it a lot of symbolic meaning), so I decided against it and chose to translate it to “destino” (“destiny”) instead, which is far more commonly used.

     - I translated “grinding” to “moer”. Even though it probably would not be said “o moer dos seus dias”, there is a very popular expression that goes: “não mata mas mói” (“it doesn’t kill you but it grinds you”), and therefore the word “moer” has the exact same meaning as “grinding” in this context.

Ninth paragraph:

     - “the tug of it” was difficult to translate, since there is no similar expression. “tug” means “puxão”, but such word is not used in this context in Portuguese and sounds rather strange. Perhaps the word “chamada”, which means “calling”, could be used, but it did not satisfy me, for it does not express the idea of magnetism that “tug” does. After many considerations, I eventually decided to simply translate it to “à sua atração” (“its attraction”), for I believe it summarizes the intrinsic meaning of the original expression. I am, however, not fully satisfied with this.