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.

Homer, hearing of this new-fangled gasohol fad, drops into one of his famous dream sequences, imagining himself stopping in at his local gas station and sipping from the pump as he fills up his tank: “One for me,” he says to the car, ” and one for you.”

If you give me a minute I can cite the episode number. Somewhere out there is an entire collection of scripts, lovingly transcribed by fans, for download over BitTorrent. One could make a searchable database of it.

After all, The Simpsons — not Wikipedia, which is lousy with shills of various sorts — is the ultimate source of all postmodern practical wisdom.

At any rate, an occasional variation in my routine, and a chance to chat with sector analysts, agribusiness economists, and other human beings I do not usually talk to these days. I would actually enjoy going out to one of these plants and seeing them generating electricity from the bagaço.

Of the canaviais of the Northeast, I have vivid memories of a day spent driving around the Recife metropolitan area with a driver known as Mr. Moustache. Quite a day. In my imagination, the memory is associated with Regina Casé as the sexy boia-fria in Tu, Eu e Ele.

I used to write a column — long forgotten, and deservedly so — on the post-Enron energy services landscape.

It was commissioned by an old college buddy with a firm that makes automated facilities management software so you can measure the energy heartbeat of your building at all times using a BlackBerry or Palm Pilot. Neato. I am a sucker for that sort of thing. Smart buildings and what not.

Personally, I can turn on the stereo, open the garage door, lock the car, and operate the air conditioning without moving from where I am sitting right now. It’s not exactly having an AI-driven smart house that you develop a personal relationship with — “I am afraid I cannot allow you to drink another caipirinha, Dave, if you plan to drive later” — but it’s a start.

At any rate, I have a column to knock out by next week. I think that between waves of bankruptcies and a “this fuel-grade ethanol certified slave-labor free” program recently launched, I have enough factoids assembled to make a start of things.

I find I am gaining more traction here in Sambodia as a freelance journalist than as a translator, which is a bit surprising to me.

Decent professional Portuguese-to-English translators seem to be in short supply here, judging from what comes down the content pipeline, but publishers of these translations don’t seem to have enough English themselves to realize they are publishing “English as she is spoke.”

Always embarrassing to see.

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.

I can tell similar stories from my publishing days.

The classic case is when you are working in Quark, have yet to think of a headline for the story you are working on, and so you type in “Insert dumbass headline” here.

You then forget to insert the dumbass headline, and so the story goes out to your vast reading public under the headline

Insert dumbass headline here.

Ouch. I have actually done something almost that bad, and I believe I read of a case at the New York Post in the last couple of years.

Moral of the story: Invest in quality assurance. Hire an editor. If you are producing translations, hire a bilingual editor. And proofread proofread proofread.

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.”

After getting. They either employ unqualified translators or dissect the whole manuscript into small paragraphs of hundreds of word and get the free translation from hundreds of different translators in the guise for a trial. At last the customer becomes the biggest victim.

I actually fell for that one myself, many years ago.

Westernwords believes the industry needs to push for ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 certifications now. I am planning a section on standards on my professional vanity Web site, when I can get around to it. But it looks like I am going to be fairly busy for a while.

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.

Carvalho, que foi gravado pela Polícia Federal, é presidente do conselho de administração da empresa. “É um tiro na nossa testa”, diz ele, se referindo, no grampo, à emenda.

Carvalho, the chairman of the board of Santos Brasil, was recorded by federal police saying, “This is a bullet in our head,” referring to the Abreu amendment.

Em outro trecho da conversa, ele reclama que o senador Heráclito Fortes (DEM-PI) não deveria discutir com a senadora Ideli Salvatti (PT-SC), como ocorreu na sessão daquele dia, porque poderia “desandar tudo”. Ideli se colocou contra a emenda, o que atraiu ironias de Heráclito.

In another excerpt from the conversation, Carvalho complains that Sen. Heráclito Fortes (DEM-Piauí) should not get into verbal sparring matches with Sen. Salvatti of Santa Caterina, as occurred in the Senate sesson that day, because it might “make everything fall apart.” Salvatti spoke against the amendment, which drew mockery from Sen. Fortes.

“Enquanto eu discursava, ele dizia: Você foi para a bancada do Daniel Dantas”, afirmou Ideli à Folha. O senador é tratado no grampo como aliado.

While I was speaking, he was saying, “You have gone over Dantas’ side,” the Southern senator said. Fortes is described in the wiretapped conversation as an ally of Dantas.

No relatório da PF, há uma confusão sobre a suposta propina. Ele registra indícios de que “a senadora Ideli teria recebido R$ 2 milhões”, embora os diálogos deixem claro que a menção é em relação a Katia. “O delegado é tão sereno que diz que quem teria recebido foi a Ideli”, ironizou Heráclito.

And here is where the federal police, rushing to make a deadline, might well have wanted to bring in a fresh pair of eyeballs to look the thing over before handing it in.

In the police report, there is a mix-up over the alleged bribe. It reports indications that “Sen. Salvatti was said to have received R$2 million.” The conversation, however, makes it clear that the reference to the alleged bribe recipient is to Katia Abreu. “The chief investigator is so confident of his case that he says it was Salvatti who got the bribe,” Fortes quipped.

Irritada, Ideli disse que telefonou ontem para o ministro Tarso Genro (Justiça) e para o juiz federal Fausto Martin De Sanctis, responsável pelo caso, para pedir correção e a punição do responsável. Segundo a senadora, Tarso afirmou que a situação “é grave e acaba desqualificando o inquérito”.

Irritated, Salvatti said she called the minister of justice and federal judge De Sanctis yesterday to ask for a correction, and punishment of the person responsible for the error. According to the Senator, the justice minister told her “this is serious, and winds up undermining the investigation.”

The policeman simply got the names of the two (female) senators — neither of whom could ever be mistaken for Sen. Fortes — mixed up.

We all groaned in high school when our teacher told us that spelling and grammar would count, so be sure and proofread. We were confident that in real life, they never would.

Ah, but they do.

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:

Prezados Senhores,

Vimos solicitar a colaboração de V.Sa. no sentido de enviar uma circular aos seus associados lembrando-lhes o cumprimento da Lei no 9.610 de 12 de fevereiro de 1998, particularmente no que se refere ao Título II, capítulo I “Das Obras Intelectuais” e Capítulo II — “Da Autoria das Obras Intelectuais” e finalmente ao Título III capítulos I e II, “Dos Direitos Morais do Autor”, que prevê a publicação do nome do tradutor em lugar visível da obra bem como “indicado ou anunciado” toda vez que o livro por ele traduzido for mencionado em sites, releases, anúncios, outdoors, busdoors e quaisquer outros veículos de divulgação.

[tktktktktk]

Certos de poder contar com suas providências

Certain that we can count on your taking the appropriate measures,

Elizabeth Thompson

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.”

Speaking of which, Hong Kong recently passed a measure mandating translation and interpreting services for all citizens who speak neither Chinese nor English:

Hong Kong, China (Standard): Hong Kong passed its first anti-racism law yesterday and was immediately plunged into controversy over a clause which mandates that ethnic minorities be provided with translation services if they can’t speak Chinese or English. Under the Race Discrimination Bill, which was passed unanimously by the Legislative Council yesterday, all public and private organizations will have a legal obligation to provide translation services to ethnic minorities.

Back to FIT-IFT conference:

In terms of the number of participants and presentations, this is also the largest FIT world congress ever. It is also unique for the conference to take place in an Olympic host nation on the eve of the sports extravaganza.

Anyone organizing a boycott over the Tibet issue, I wonder?

According to Huang Youyi, FIT Vice President, over 1,400 people from more than 70 countries and regions have registered to participate in the congress, including 700 domestic participants from China. This makes it the largest FIT World Congress ever.

Translation industry boom in China:

Huang, who is also Vice President and Secretary-general of the Translators Association of China (TAC), said there are three reasons behind China’s domestic enthusiasm for the conference. The first reason is the boom in translation and interpretation in China. The increasing exchanges and communication between China and the outside world at all levels have generated great demand for translation and interpretation services. The second reason is the introduction of new translation techniques, such as localization and translation software. The third reason is that translation and interpretation education in China has been developing rapidly in recent years. Over 70 percent of Chinese attendees at the event come from institutions of higher learning.

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.

A good supplementary source — not all listed companies in the world list in the jurisdiction of the SEC, after all — is the Euronext corporate actions newswire, which is even evolving in fits and starts toward being fully multilingual.

One of the translation issues that this sort of searching was able to resolve for me, to take a simple example, had to do with the Portuguese term fato relevante.

Many Brazilian filers opt for an overly literal-minded translation: Material Fact.

But the vast majority of filers in English, whether with the SEC or with the European exchanges, refer to it as a Material Event.

English ‘fact’ and Portuguese ‘fato’ are false cognates in this case, even though they overlap in meaning and both derive from the same Latin term.

From the Michaelis dictionary, on fato:

sm (lat factu) 1 Coisa ou ação feita. 2 Acontecimento, sucesso. 3 Aquilo de que se trata. 4 O que é real. De fato: com efeito. Estar ao fato: estar ciente, ser sabedor.

1 A thing or action accomplished. 2 an event, happening 3 the topic at hand 4 that which is real (in fact: really) …

The subject of a Material Event is either (1) a corporate action or (2) an event not in the corporation’s control that affects the corporation’s business.

The point being that if one goal of multilingual communication with investors is not to give investors the uncomfortable sense that you are not from around here, using a translation corpus to check your language — is that how most companies in my line of business say that? — makes sense.

If your Freedonian plow and tractor manufacturer is competing for capital with non-Freedonian plow and tractor concerns, it is not to your advantage to communicate about this line of business in a way your target investors are accustomed to?

Idiosyncratic terminology tends to undermine the underlying argument of your investor relations campaign: That a plow or tractor is a plow or tractor is a plow or tractor, and that Freedonian ones are just like, and just as good as, any others.

Material Fact or Material Event: Is the question itself material or immaterial?

If 99% of filers (and the regulator filed to, and the regulations regulating the filings) call it a Material Event, why on earth would you want to call it something different?

It makes you seem as though you are practicing Humpty Dumptyism:

… the insistence on a meaning of a word that is not generally accepted by others. Also sometimes referred to as The Humpty Dumpty Principle. The term derives from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll (Chapter 6)

..

… 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:

As for what they do, here’s the short version: After news happens in the chaos and clutter of the real world, it travels through a reporter’s mind, a photographer’s eye, a notebook and camera lens, into computer files, then through multiple layers of editing. Copy editors handle the final transition to an ink-on-paper object. On the news-factory floor, they do the refining and packaging. They trim words, fix grammar, punctuation and style, write headlines and captions.

Yes, I have done all that.

But they also do a lot more. Copy editors are the last set of eyes before yours. They are more powerful than proofreaders. They untangle twisted prose. They are surgeons, removing growths of error and irrelevance; they are minimalist chefs, straining fat. Their goal is to make sure that the day’s work of a newspaper staff becomes an object of lasting beauty and excellence once it hits the presses.

Unfortunately, there is no time for lasting beauty and excellence any longer. The Internet has changed all that. As though we no longer communicated using language at all, but rather some form of packet-switched mental telepathy.

The job hasn’t disappeared yet, but it is swiftly evolving, away from an emphasis on style and consistency, from making a physical object perfect the first time. The path to excellence is now through speed, agility and creativity in using multiple expressive outlets for information in all its shapes and sounds.

As newspapers lose money and readers, they have been shedding great swaths of expensive expertise. They have been forced to shrink or eliminate the multiply redundant levels of editing that distinguish their kind of journalism from what you find on TV, radio and much of the Web. Copy editors are being bought out or forced out; they are dying and not being replaced.

Webby doesn’t necessarily mean sloppy, of course, and online news operations will shine with all the brilliance that the journalists who create them can bring.

This is, of course, pure horseshit.

Posting stuff to the Web without copyediting and proofreading first it has the exact same effect as committing it to print without copyediting and proofreading it: It increases your risk of making an ass of yourself with factual errors and errors of language that garble your message.

And when readers start looking for someone to blame, the Times editorialist will realize how wrong he is:

… 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.”

When the copy desk is gone, editorial “content managers” — whose main purpose in life is delegating responsibility for FUBARs to others — will certain miss it, because they will have no one left to blame those FUBARs on.

They might even have to buy themselves a pack of blue pencils a copy of the AP — or a handy online subscription, which I invest in every year — and start making themselves less useless again.

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.

Hoje já existem muitos “artistas experientes no ramo” – como Pedro Paulo Reis, de 27 anos – que conseguem o inimaginável. Canções conhecidas ganham novas e hilárias versões, geralmente sem nexo, mas irresistíveis no quesito diversão. É fundamental ver a “nova letra em português” enquanto se escuta o som original, vendo as imagens que se sucedem rapidamente, representando a “tradução”.

Today there are even “artists with experience in the medium,” such as Pedro Paulo Reis, 27, who have achieved the inconceivable: Well-known songs get new, hilarious versions, generally without any resemblance to the original, but irresistible and fun.

Does anyone here remember “Weird Al” Yankovich? The very successful song parodist?

- Costumo fazer as traduções no meu tempo livre. Eu já tinha feito algumas produções de conteúdo humorístico para Internet, e também me inspirei no trabalho da Companhia do Salame. Quanto às traduções de letras em inglês, algumas foram bem difíceis, outras nem tanto. É necessário ouvir o mesmo trecho de música várias vezes, até achar uma palavra ou frase que se pareça mais – explica o versátil administrador de empresas Pedro Paulo, mineiro de Varginha.

“I do the ‘translations’ in my spare time, usually. I had already done some humorous content for the Internet, and I was also inspired by the work of the Cia. do Salame. As to the translations of English lyrics, some were really hard, others not so hard. You have to listen to the same passage from the song over and over until you find a word or phrase that sounds more like [Portuguese],” explains the versatile business manager Pedro Paulo, who hails from Varginha in Minas Gerais.

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.

And it really does seem that the SEC is more serious about demanding it. There are those who say it ought to have spent more time thinking about junk securitiziations than Plain English and XBRL, but the fact is that this is what has passed for reform that benefits the small investor under the reign of Chairman Christopher Cox.

Lutz, author of “The New Doublespeak: Why No One Knows What Anyone’s Saying Anymore,” has been put in charge of a Securities and Exchange Commission effort to fundamentally revamp the way companies provide information to the investing public.

I warms my heart to see college professors put in charge of fundamentally revamping the real world. Expect fierce resistance from those who inhabit it.

It took 75 years for regulators to come up with an eye-glazing collection of 10-Ks, DEF14As, SC-13G/As and other arcane reporting documents. Lutz, named to his post two weeks ago, has six months to assemble a plan to reshape disclosure from the ground up.

The Plain Englishman is an anarchist:

“The technical term is ‘blow up all the forms’,” he said.

I presented some material on Plain English to a client (one of those who have made up their minds to agree wholeheartedly with you and then not do what you advise) recently.

I will try to organize that and post it to the Standards & Practices section of the Boi Zebu Editorial Services Web site. The site is still under construction, so bear with me.