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Some pretty charming Portuguese words and phrases needed in English that fits well as a romance language and that simply cannot be translated completely into English. “SAUDADE” symbolizes a mixture of a few emotions: longing, melancholy, incompleteness, and love. The word holds a lot of weight, and saudade  can apply to a person, place, or […]

As translators , we are primarily concerned with communicating the overall meaning of a stretch of language. To achieve this,  we need to start by decoding the units and structures which carry that meaning. The smallest unit we would expect to possess individual meaning is the word. Any written word can be defined as any […]

If language were simply a nomenclature for a set of universal concepts, it would be easy to translate from one language to another. One would simply replace the Portuguese name for a concept with the English name. If language were like this the task of learning a new language would also be much easier than […]

Translation, involving the transposition of thoughts expressed in one language by one social group into the appropriate expression of another group, entails a process of cultural de-coding, re-coding and en-coding. As cultures are increasingly brought into greater contact with one another, multicultural considerations are brought to bear to an ever-increasing degree. Now, how do all […]

Because culture gives birth to language, translation and culture are intimately connected. Language is the only institution without which no other social institution can function; it therefore underpins the three pillars upon which culture is built. The “personal”, whereby we as individuals think and function as such; the “collective”, whereby we function in a social […]

Unjustly low status do exist in professional terms of the translator. Throughout the long history, translation has never really enjoyed the kind of recognition and respect that other professions, such as medicine and engineering have enjoyed. Translators have constantly complained that translation is underestimated as a profession. There is no doubt that the low status […]

Linguistics is a discipline which studies language both in its own right and as a tool for generating meanings. As such it should have therefore a great deal to offer to translation studies; it can certainly offer translators and interpreters valuable insights into the nature and function of language. Translation refers to carrying the meaning […]

Language is transmitted culturally; that is, it is learned. To a lesser extent it is taught, when parents, for example, deliberately encourage their children to talk and to respond to talk, correct their mistakes, and enlarge their vocabulary. But it must be emphasized that children very largely acquire their first language by “grammar construction” from […]

Can I use a free computer translation tool instead? A computer or machine translation (MT) is useful if you simply need to know what the main subject is of a Portuguese text. However automatic translation tools will not be able to provide you with a professional translation. Often the results are humorous at the very […]