Translation: Big... what? | The Economist


Translation
Big... what?
Mar 2nd 2012, 20:42 by H.J. | SÃO PAULO

BRAZILIANS are extremely keen to know what the world thinks of them, and nearly every week what I write is translated into Portuguese, with the addition of the phrase “According to The Economist” at the beginning of each paragraph, and the whole thing remixed to put what the locals regard as the most salient points up front. I like to check these articles out, because I’m just as keen to know what they thought we got right or wrong, and what struck them as interesting or controversial.

This week I wrote about the recent abrupt decision of José Serra—a former mayor and governor of São Paulo, and twice a failed presidential candidate—to stand for mayor of São Paulo later this year. I called him a “big beast”—a common expression in England, at least, for a political party’s main players, and one without either particularly positive or negative connotations.

My political analysis got translated, sure, but the main point of interest was this expression, “big beast”. Some of the journalists who wrote about our take clearly didn’t know what we were trying to imply about Mr Serra, and therefore couldn’t decide how to translate it. Some settled for “grande besta”; others for “grande fera”. As one careful soul devoted an entire chunk of his article to explaining:

In Portuguese, the word ‘besta’ is used colloquially to mean ‘idiot’ or ‘fool’; but there is no such connotation in English and so this is not what The Economist means. The magazine’s intention is more in the sense of ‘fera’. However, this word doesn’t work well either, since in Portuguese it has a positive sense (‘e aí, fera!’ [my best attempt: ‘hey, big guy!’ - H.J.]) that doesn’t exist in English.
In the comments after some of the articles, readers continue the argument, and complain about the various publications’ choices, which they take as revealing their political biases. Some comments verge on hysterical—one mentioned the Number of the Beast.

I agree with the reader who said that no such such direct translation should even have been attempted, drawing a parallel with Barack Obama’s praise for the previous president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: “This is my man, right here. I love this guy.” He says: “It’s as if you were to translate this literally, and get: Esse é meu homem, aqui mesmo. Eu amo esse cara. Which sounds like you mean to say that Obama and Lula are homosexual, and had a torrid affair.” It’s so hard for me to translate what Brazilians say into English in a way that does not introduce double meanings—or indeed miss intentional ones—and on top of that doesn’t sound stilted, that it’s great fun to cause similar difficulties myself. Even though (honestly!) I really didn’t mean to.

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Michael Watson March 6th, 18:07
Dear Johnson, I must say I find the penultimate sentence of the last paragraph of your article a bit odd concerning word order. Why not to have written it as:-
What Brazilians say is so hard for me to translate into English in a way that does not introduce double meanings..........(etc.)
MRW

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Zeke Jones March 6th, 10:24
not sure if the same would be true in Portuguese, but in Spanish a good translation might be to say that he is "un animal político". this implies that the person in question is a big, strong figure, perhaps with quite a bit of a positive connotation, but it preserves the fauna-related reference. another commonly used term is "barón político", meaning a kingpin, with the connotation that the person is a long-standing figure in a high cushy position with lots of power.

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Serendippity March 6th, 03:27
Ha-ha-ha-ha...., that was a serious mishap !!!
It is just too common to see this kind of translations to go the wrong way, and believe me one of the most serious challenges I've had in 30 years of business, it's been keeping the right connotation in place when translated.
Note: in almost any spanish speaking country as well, a beast might be read as the devil.

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guest-ilennna March 5th, 18:54
It looks like you need a good English < > Portuguese translator. Please contact me at thais@translationsdecoder.com. :-)
Thank you
Thaïs Lips

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A. Clemens March 5th, 17:08
Intercultural communication gets more challenging for writers with globalization. Meanings must be clear for everybody or everybody needs to accept that there are are different meanings for things. Information about the different expressions there are on the country which you are translating from may come in handy, but it is not easy to find a list of all expressions. Uff, good luck with the brazilians! At least controversy is good for journalism.

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MelT15 March 5th, 15:47
When you are studying to become a translator, you are encouraged to do a lot a research to try and find the best match possible. In this case, I wouldn´t attempt to translate "big beast", because we don´t have an equivalent expression here in Brazil. I´d simply say " He is highly respected.." Which doing a little research just now, I found out the meaning. You can´t just simply guess.

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Anjin-San March 5th, 09:34
" It’s so hard for me to translate what Brazilians say into English in a way that does not introduce double meanings—or indeed miss intentional ones—and on top of that doesn’t sound stilted, that it’s great fun to cause similar difficulties myself. Even though (honestly!) I really didn’t mean to."

I understand you perfectly! I experience similar situations when attempting to cross Japanese - English language barrier...

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edwardong March 5th, 01:16
Eu amo esse "Economist" ;-)

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ISingofOlaf March 4th, 21:31
Wait, Silva and Obama didn't have a torrid affair? I'm crushed. Spoiler alert next time, eh?

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Rotteneggs March 4th, 19:04
While perfect translation is of course impossible, most things can be got across pretty well with some effort. I have seen the famous quote attributed to Louis XIV, "J'ai failli attendre", cited as an example of something impossible to express in English. But "I all but waited" surely fits the bill quite well. It's a matter of erasing the words of the original from your mind while retaining the meaning, and then conveying that in the target language -- a trick translators spend their lives perfecting.

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jvictor1789 March 4th, 07:20
Yes, the "He is my man, I love him" line definitely was a very bad idea.

The "Big Beast" idiom wasn´t all that fortunate either.

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Dhruv March 3rd, 11:58
In relation to the intelligent life series on learning another language; I have posted the 'social value' of learning more languages. The nuances and niceties of language comes awry when translated!

http://uncoveredinterests.blogspot.com/2012/03/economics-of-language.html

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ElspethD March 3rd, 09:55
This is just a suggestion, buy why don't they have the articles translated by a professional English to Portuguese translator, instead of having those journalists trying to guess what the English text says and how to say it in Portuguese? I am absolutely sure that a professional translator would have been perfectly capable of finding a good solution.

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perguntador in reply to ElspethD March 3rd, 15:15
@ElspethD,

Maybe that would just spoil the fun of debating about what TE wanted to say. And — very important — of trying to spin it to fit one's political views.

You certainly know the story of how Brazilians took football from the English and made it their own thing. I have the impression we are now trying to do the same with the very American art of political spinning.

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jvictor1789 in reply to ElspethD March 4th, 07:23
I doubt it.Intelligent jokes are almost beyond translation.

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ashbird March 3rd, 09:02
A really interesting example of words that are not translatable. I wonder sometimes whether it is best to leave the word as is, not translated, but by way of a footnote explain what the word means. But most readers hate footnotes.

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Importexporthomestudy.com March 3rd, 00:33
Double entendre? I also have noticed Brazilians want to know what the world thinks about them but that goes for the majority of other people too.

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perguntador in reply to Importexporthomestudy.com March 3rd, 01:44
With the exception of old (and present) imperial powers, which couldn't care less.

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ashbird in reply to perguntador March 3rd, 08:55
With the exception of old (and present) imperial powers, which couldn't care less.

I couldn't agree with you more. And I add: to their (old and present imperial powers) detriment.

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So... March 2nd, 21:58
I notice that the Economist, being Brits and all, likes to throw in more subtle oblique zings into their writing, more so than American journos. Likely makes the translator's job bit more entertaining.

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Hektor Konomi in reply to So... March 6th, 17:33
Plenty of Americans at TE, sometimes you can tell when reading the article, especially the science ones...

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Faedrus March 2nd, 20:52
"I agree with the reader who said that no such such direct translation should even have been attempted..."

While I believe that translating TE into other languages is important, given the newspaper's global influence, translation in order to give the exact same meaning as intended can be nearly impossible.

A simple example can be found between English and Spanish, where the term "I like him" is translated as "a mi me gusta a el" -

Which literally means "he pleases me".

Well, in English, "I like him" and "he pleases me" are WAY different...

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Maddy188 in reply to Faedrus March 3rd, 15:57
Well, well, well,(chuckling),
Translating articles from The Economist requires not only understanding all the intricacies of English in economics and business but also a broad literary culture. I never have agreed with its politics but have always worshiped at the altar of its use of language, especially the editorials.

All ideas are translatable....and Big Beast is most certainly what one would call: O Bicho Grande....which if entered into that other beast (goo----) + política returns some interesting apropos hits....

A fera is a beast but a wild (untamed) one.
And a besta is an idiot.

British children's literature is full of big beasts including that old favorite the Heffalump (Pooh)...as is its Brazilian counterpart offerings...

Sometimes translation is child's play but you do have to know the game.

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jvictor1789 in reply to Faedrus March 4th, 07:35
All the five idioms in two languages you just mentioned mean different things, are mutually untranslatable in the strictest sense,and can only be translated in the context of a larger narrative of which they would be a part.

And if that narrative is full of double meanings and hidden ironies, we better forget about it.

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Faedrus in reply to jvictor1789 March 4th, 08:23
I used to do a lot of translation of business plans from Spanish to English. I'd spend a couple of days working on the translation of a plan, put it aside for a couple of days, and then read the original and translated texts to make sure that the translated plan read as intended.

And, while I was often happy with the results, the translated plans only made sense within the larger context of the ideas being proposed, as you describe.

Otherwise, if taken literally word for word, the translations didn't work. They only worked in the broader sense of the ideas being proposed.

If that makes sense.