Sweetness and (Electrical) Power

To alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. –Homer Simpson

Having recently been sounded out about writing a biweekly column on the sugarcane processing industry in Brazil, I immediately wonder whether I can get away with a veiled reference or two to former Brooklyn College anthropologist Sidney Mintz, best known for his book Sweetness and Power:

Mintz has published several books and many articles and reviews. In 1956, his study of a sugarcane village became part of The People of Puerto Rico, edited by Julian Steward and others. In 1960, he published Worker in the Cane, the life story of a cane worker who came from that same village. And in 1985, he wrote Sweetness and Power, which is concerned with the history of sugar worldwide. He has since written papers on the anthropology of food, and initiated research on the global role of soybeans and soy foods, while continuing his Caribbean work.

No, check that. The truth is that the first thought that occurs to me is a sequence from The Simpsons that takes a piss out of the use of ethanol to fuel automobiles.

From the “Lost in Translation” File

alienation news notes:

BBC news on 31 October had a story about a bilingual road sign in Swansea, South Wales. In English it reads “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.”

Underneath, the text in Welsh is “Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i’w gyfieithu”, which may be translated as “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.”

This was the text of an e-mail that came back from the translation service used by staff of Swansea council when a Welsh equivalent of the English sign was requested.

“There Are Some Real Ratfinks in the Translation Industry”

Westernwords — the Web log of an English-to-Chinese translator — makes a very good point in not so very good English. But the point gets through.

The translation industry guideline has not been imposed to be executed by all translation service body and some illegal behaviors such as deceiving and big quote difference are making wormy sores in this industry structure, which makes the industry standardization rushing. Some ratfinks assign the projects they get and have no mind to pay for their contemporarily employed translators’ work. Some translation companies quote the lowest one can’t imagine in order to grab large amount of deals.

My friend and colleague The Enigmatic Mermaid, in unguarded moments, refers to this as the “crack whoredom of the industry.”

Why The Brazilian Federal Police Could Have Used A Good Editor

From the Folha de S.Paulo‘s coverage of an enormous business and political scandal here in Brazil — too complicated to explain in 25 words or less — emerges a lesson about why spellcheck will never replace the services of a good editor.

The federal police report in the case leaked, and many critics have used the plentiful spelling, grammatical and even substantive errors in the report to denigrate the quality of the investigation itself.

At issue is a tangled Web of hearsay about alleged bribery of Brazilian senators as they prepare to vote on an amendment to a bill on port regulation.

Se passasse, a emenda de Kátia Abreu prejudicaria Dantas, cujo grupo possui a Santos Brasil, empresa que opera terminal portuário. Entre outras coisas, abriria espaço para a entrada de uma forte concorrência.

If it passed, the Abreu amendment would have harmed Dantas, whose group owns Santos Brasil, a maritime freight terminal operation. Among other things, it would have opened the way for strong competition in the market.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

The Sindicato Nacional dos Tradutores, Brazil’s national translators1 union, announces the dispatching of a petition, with a terse note of protest, to the National Publishers Syndicate (SNEL):

Carta do SINTRA ao Sindicato Nacional dos Editores e Editoras

Prezados colegas,

Dear colleagues:

O Sintra, como representante da categoria, alertado pelo abaixo assinado feito por tradutores pertencentes à lista Literatti a respeito da omissão da publicação do nome do tradutor em diversas obras traduzidas, o que constitui violação da Lei de Direitos autorais em vigor, se dirigiu ao Snel (Sindicato Nacional dos Editores) e a algumas editoras solicitando o cumprimento da mencionada Lei por meio da carta abaixo:

Sintra, as the union representing translators, wishes to inform you of the petition signed by translators from the Literatti mailing list with respect to the failure to credit translators by name in a number of translated works, which constitutes a violation of prevailing law on the rights of authors, and addressed to SNEL, the National Publishers Syndicate and certain publishers in particular, asking for them to comply with the aforementioned law. The following letter was sent:

Translation Nation

Translation Nation: The Beijing Review engages in some local boosterism for the IFT-FIT conference to be held in Shanghai in August:

China’s position as a powerhouse of the translation industry is to be cemented, as it becomes the first Asian country to host the International Federation of Translators’ (FIT) international meeting.

FIT’s XVIII World Congress, to be held in Shanghai from August 2 to 7, is also historic for several other reasons. The half-century old event comes in a year that the UN has proclaimed the International Year of Languages, based on a pursuit of multilingualism as a means of promoting, protecting and preserving the diversity of languages and cultures globally. That idea is reflected in the theme of this year’s FIT World Congress, “Translation and Cultural Diversity.”

The Corporate Actions Newswire as Translation Corpus

EDGAR (after Allen Poe, weirdly)

Am I crazy, or does the U.S. SEC’s EDGAR Full Text Search not make a very useful terminology corpus for business and financial translators, despite its shortcomings?

Among those shortcomings is the lack of an intuitive interface for querying the database, and the fact that you have to click through about five text-heavy pages before you even arrive at that form — drag the link above to the bookmarks folder of your browser to avoid having the make the schlep every time you visit.

Still, locating and then visiting the help page and reading up on the limited set of Boolean operators available should get you started.

Downes’ Syndrome: The Times on “The Death of Copyediting”

..

… after visiting the Newseum, I know what I have suspected for a few years: if newspaper copy editors vanish from the earth, no one is going to notice.”

In a Changing World of News, an Elegy for Copy Editors: Lawrence Downes, the voice of “suburban issues” on the New York Times editorial board, laments that the sort of care once shown by the language professionals at the copy desk means nothing in a digital world.

I mention it because of a recent experience trying to explain to a Brazilian client why they ought to set up a copy desk that highly technical English-language translations would be reviewed by before being forwarded on to English-language news wires.

Since a key to successful communication is communicating to the reader in the manner to which he or she is accustomed, and since readers of English-language news wires are very, very accustomed to reading copy prepared in accordance either with Financial Times or Associated Press publication style, I suggested to the client that they adopt the Associated Press Stylebook.

The proposal generated a certain amount of incomprehension. I prepared PowerPoint slides and everything, but seemed to get nowhere with it.

In the U.S., journalists and publicists alike use AP style, apparently it is not usual in Brazil for publicists to keep, say, a copy of the Estado de S. Paulo editorial manual on their desks.

And it often shows, I regret to say, both among the hacks (journalists) and the flacks (public relations professionals).

The capacity for the Brazilian press to misspell proper names, even in the Age of Google, never ceases to amaze, for example.

But what is a copy editor? It’s how I have earned my living for a decade or so now, and the Times provides a somewhat romantic job description:

“Rough Translations” Are The Latest Internet Craze!

Traduções toscas viram vício na Internet: “Rough translations” — which are, in fact, comical mistranslations of popular tunes — are all the rage on the Internet these days, reports the Jornal do Brasil.

RIO – A Internet encurtou distâncias, trouxe modismos e tendências, muitos efêmeros, quase descartáveis. Mas um deles parece ter vindo para ficar: os vídeos com paródias de músicas famosas, popularmente conhecidos como “traduções toscas”. As engraçadas e despretensiosas brincadeiras resistem há algum tempo, e vem crescendo cada vez mais, particularmente entre os jovens.

The Internet has closed vast distances and brought us many fads and trends, many of them ephemeral to the point of being mere throw-aways. But one of them seems here to say: Videos with parodies of famous pop songs, popularly known as “rough translations.” These funny and unpretentious jokes have been holding out for quite some time now, and are growing in popularlity, especially among the young.

Seus criadores traduzem as músicas pelo som e não pelo seu real significado. Associam o que ouvem em qualquer língua (principalmente inglês e japonês) com palavras parecidas em português e procuram imagens que as representem. O resultado é sempre muito engraçado e ágil.

Their creators translate the lyrics according to the sound of the words, not their actual meaning. They associate what they hear in any language (mainly English and Japanee) with similar words in Portuguese, then search out images to match. The result is always hilarious and clever.

What’s Portuguese for “Legal Mumbo-Jumbo”? Translating Into Plain English

For retired Rutgers professor, new role not lost in translation: A New Jersey college professor is put in charge of implementing the U.S. Security Exchange Commission’s Plain English initiative, which requires financial reporting by public companies to be written in language understandable by laypersons — the mythical “average individual investor.”

When it comes to corporate gobbledygook, William Lutz shares your pain.

As a consultant to promote the use of plain English in financial documents, the retired Rutgers professor managed to plow through 58 mutual fund prospectuses before crying “uncle.”

“My brain was turning to pablum,” he said.

I sympathize. I often find myself confronting an even more mind-bending challenge in my financial translation work: How to turn what is turgid in the source language — here in Brazil, it’s known as juridiquês, or “legal mumbo-jumbo” — into Plain English in the target, if that is what the regulator your clients are providing disclosure to demands.