Welcome to our first issue of the Language Exepress!

The months that preceded the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 gave Portuguese a new prominence. These global events went in tandem with a period of economic boom in Brazil. Work and investment opportunities drew attention to the country, its culture and its official language – often mistakenly presumed to be Spanish. 

 

While Brazilians on the other side of the Atlantic tried to learn English - many of the incorrect translations and misunderstandings turned into memes and jokes - on this side of the pond, there was an increase in demand for Portuguese language courses and, more generally, language resources. It was in this context that Penguin Random House contacted me in 2013 to translate a Portuguese Phrasebook. I produce it together with Jill Norman, the author of other phrasebooks in the same series. Penguin Random House published the Portuguese Phrasebook in 2014, months before the World Cup, and is currently on sale across the globe.

 

Reviewing the first version, written by a Portuguese writer and translator, Antonio de Figueiredo, in 1986, presented a few challenges. Firstly, there was the temporal distance between 1986 and 2014. Some of the vocabulary of a phrasebook written in 1986 was obsolete, including for instance, “escudos”, the former Portuguese currency. I significantly updated the sections “Money”, “Communications” and “Shops and Services”. It was fascinating to observe the impact of technological and socio-political developments on the lexicon.

 

Alongside the eighteen-year gap between the two versions, the 2014 version focused on Brazilian Portuguese. The primary focus of other volumes such as the Spanish and French ones was the European variant of the language. This also meant that the template reflected ways of living that are more common to Europe. For instance, the emphasis placed on the use of trains is not as relevant in Brazil, where there is not as much of a rail network. Brazil is a big country in comparison to European countries and I considerably modified the template, in particular the sections “Getting Around” and “Sightseeing”.

 

The Phrasebook also offers a Pronunciation guide for each sentence and phrase. For this reason, it was very productive to collaborate with Jill Norman, a native English speaker, who would write down how I pronounced the words and sentences. Here, we also confronted the fact that Brazilian Portuguese encompasses a wide range of regional accents and mine is Paulista (from São Paulo). Because São Paulo is Brazil’s financial centre, TV often disseminates Paulista accent  and readers would probably come across it during their visit in Brazil.

 

Therefore, while translating the Portuguese Phrasebook, I was constantly negotiating the temporal, regional and social aspects of the language.  As a result, the update of the book effectively resulted in a new version. Given the ongoing transformations of the language, it is highly likely that in twenty-eight years time, a notably different Phrasebook will be on the shelves.