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Team Exploradores - TAC 2014 TEAM Thread

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Emily96
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 4428 days ago

270 posts - 342 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Spanish, Finnish, Latin

 
 Message 89 of 204
21 January 2014 at 8:38am | IP Logged 
Hola exploradores! I'm from the other Spanish team (how ominous that sounds), but after spending an intense week
studying portuguese last summer just to learn about how it compares to Spanish, i'm definitely interested in
following this team's progress. It looks like you're all set up for a successful year! Buena suerte a todos, i'll be
checking in whenever i can =)
2 persons have voted this message useful



mrwarper
Diglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
Spain
forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5226 days ago

1493 posts - 2500 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2
Studies: German, Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 90 of 204
21 January 2014 at 11:44am | IP Logged 
Well, I haven't seen much Spanish (or about it) in this team thread yet, Emily, maybe you can make the Exploradores get up to speed with that -- or keep us informed on how they compare ;)

1e4e6 wrote:
[...] but what about e.g., Brazilians who need subtitles to understand Iberian films, programmes, etc.? There seems to be less difficulty vice versa, but I think that even on the forum here both sides have witnessed difficulties in understanding [...] like when Portuguese say that the accent is very "new" or, on the other extreme, close to impossible to understand.

I know no Portuguese, but the whole issue sounds like the problem exists only when people don't put in the least effort to understand each other, or when they are really incapable of thinking out of the box, and have been exposed to one very homogeneous variant of the language: their own -- that's why they're clueless when they hear something 'new' or different meanings for otherwise familiar words.

All of this is often hidden behind nationalistic/regional pride and other nonsense, if you ask me, because it is easier to blame others for not 'speaking properly' than admitting that one can't cope with his/her own language outside their own little parcel.

The most embarrassing example I've seen made me see it all in its full 'glory' -- I heard many kids at my high school complained they couldn't understand a certain teacher because he spoke in a 'refined and big city' way. The guy was from a bit up north, but I can tell you there was nothing to complain about. Later on I learned this was a more widespread problem than a slight accent, and that most teachers, even true hometown locals, just 'fancied weird words'.

Was that a language (national, regional, or otherwise) variant problem? No, it was a bunch of boneheads at their finest. As you can imagine, most such people didn't get a lot better at communication in the following twenty-five years. Were they to get out of their cave, we'd see again how it's everybody else who does it wrong.

Edited by mrwarper on 21 January 2014 at 11:45am

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espejismo
Diglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5051 days ago

498 posts - 905 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani

 
 Message 91 of 204
21 January 2014 at 12:52pm | IP Logged 
mrwarper wrote:
Well, I haven't seen much Spanish (or about it) in this team thread yet, Emily, maybe you can make the Exploradores get up to speed with that -- or keep us informed on how they compare ;)



Good point!

I found the following exercise in Google Books:

R. Stathakis wrote:

¿Has visitado algún país hispanohablante? ¿Conoces a alguien que es de un país hispanohablante? ¿Alguna vez has necesitado usar el español en tuda vida diaria? Describe tus experiencias con el español y con los países hispanohablantes.
Si no tienes ninguna experiencia para describir, escribe sobre qué país te gustaría visitar y por qué.


Why don't we do it as this month's challenge?


Edited by espejismo on 21 January 2014 at 12:53pm

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espejismo
Diglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5051 days ago

498 posts - 905 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani

 
 Message 92 of 204
21 January 2014 at 1:00pm | IP Logged 
Emily96 wrote:
Hola exploradores! I'm from the other Spanish team (how ominous that sounds), but after spending an intense week
studying portuguese last summer just to learn about how it compares to Spanish, i'm definitely interested in
following this team's progress. It looks like you're all set up for a successful year! Buena suerte a todos, i'll be
checking in whenever i can =)


Great! =) Should I add you as an observer?
2 persons have voted this message useful



iguanamon
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
Joined 5262 days ago

2241 posts - 6731 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

 
 Message 93 of 204
21 January 2014 at 1:30pm | IP Logged 
¡Bienvenida a los exploradores, Emily96! I haven't seen much activity at all here, lately, for either language. How are you Spanish learners getting along? We have a great team here, with a lot of language power behind them.

I talked about the multi-track approach in a post the other day on HTLAL. Here's a practical application from twitter.

Papa Francisco en Español ‏@Pontifex_es Jan 18 wrote:

Las guerras destrozan muchas vidas. Pienso especialmente en los niños a los que les han robado su infancia.


Papa Francisco em português ‏@Pontifex_pt Jan 18 wrote:

As guerras destroçam tantas vidas. Penso especialmente nas crianças depredadas da sua infância.


Without looking at the English translation at the bottom of this post, try to puzzle the meaning out, both Spanish learners and Portuguese learners, even if you're just beginning. This is a translation of what the Pope tweeted, not by the Pontiff himself, by one of his aides.

Emily96, you can see the differences here in the translator's choice of words. They're somewhat different, despite the fact that very similar words exist for the Spanish words. The translator could have said "muitas" instead of "tantas", but chose not to. "Roubar" is the Portuguese cognate of the Spanish verb "Robar" but the translator chose to express the concept using the verb "depredar". This tweet is not a one-to-one cognate based translation. Word to word direct translation using the Portuguese cognate of a Spanish word is a mistake second language learners coming from Spanish to Portuguese often make, when they rely too much on their Spanish. It just doesn't sound right. The grammar and structure is similar but subtly different.

That's why I don't recommend the various "From Spanish to Portuguese" courses (using English as the base language) for second language speakers of Spanish learning Portuguese. In my opinion, it's much better to approach it on its own merits, to think about Portuguese as being its own language (which it is!) with its own rules and words that may be similar but also different.

I say this from experience having come to Portuguese after learning Spanish. I too, thought, well they're so similar this will be a cakewalk. I downloaded the From Spanish to Portuguese FSI course and Tá Falado. I abandoned this approach because it made me think of Portuguese too much in the context of how it relates to Spanish. That being said, my Spanish was, and is, a huge help to me with Portuguese. To me it was best used as an aid, not a blueprint.

Here's the Popes tweet in English translation:

Pope Francis ‏@Pontifex Jan 18 wrote:

Wars shatter so many lives. I think especially of children robbed of their childhood.


The English cognate "destroy" could have been used just as effectively, but I think "shatter" somehow has more power. I never want to be a professional translator!

Edited by iguanamon on 21 January 2014 at 1:32pm

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Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5166 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 94 of 204
21 January 2014 at 1:41pm | IP Logged 
Just a remark, I think the most idiomatic way in Brazil would say "Fico pensando
particularmente nas crianças que tiveram suas infâncias roubadas, at least that's
how I'd have written it myself.
3 persons have voted this message useful



iguanamon
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
Joined 5262 days ago

2241 posts - 6731 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

 
 Message 95 of 204
21 January 2014 at 2:10pm | IP Logged 
Me too, Expugnator! Your translation sounds better to my more Brazilian attuned ears. I don't know who the Pope's Portuguese twitter translator aid is, or where he/she may be from, but this person is more formal. Then again there's also the 140 character limit of twitter, and the desire to reach that "mid-Atlantic" Portuguese (that 1e4e6 mentioned) for all the Catholics in the Lusophone world.


Expugnator's translation also shows one of the pitfalls of going from Spanish to Portuguese in that Portuguese prefers to use the verb "ter" with the past participle instead of the cognate with Spanish "haber"- Portuguese "haver" to form the past perfect "had stolen". Spanish wouldn't use "tener" (the Spanish cognate of "ter") the other way around.

Yesterday, I had to translate an article from Público about brand new research in Parkinson's Disease (by a European team led by a Portuguese scientist) for a friend of mine who has the disease. I couldn't find anything about it in English and the paper cost $32 to download from the British medical journal which published the sudy. The language is very scientific and I think should be quite easy for any English-speaker to decode a lot of it as there's lots of scientific, Latin based terminology used.

I learned about the article via twitter. I read it and knew I had to show it to my monolingual friend. So I was able to put my Portuguese to good use, but I still don't like translating.


Edited by iguanamon on 21 January 2014 at 2:22pm

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mrwarper
Diglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
Spain
forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5226 days ago

1493 posts - 2500 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2
Studies: German, Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 96 of 204
21 January 2014 at 2:30pm | IP Logged 
iguanamon wrote:
Papa Francisco en Español ‏@Pontifex_es Jan 18 wrote:

Las guerras destrozan muchas vidas. Pienso especialmente en los niños a los que les han robado su infancia.

Papa Francisco em português ‏@Pontifex_pt Jan 18 wrote:

As guerras destroçam tantas vidas. Penso especialmente nas crianças depredadas da sua infância.

[...] The translator could have said "muitas" instead of "tantas", but chose not to.

I'm not learning Portuguese (either now or any time soon), but I have a question regarding that "tantas vidas". If that wording were used in Spanish (where it is valid), it would be asking for the right punctuation, i.e. either exclamations or an ellipsis (…) at the end -- otherwise it would look like a mutilated version of "so many lives <that then blah blah blah>", indicating there's a second clause but with none to be seen, and I'd twitch just by looking at it. Doesn't it look like it's missing a second clause in Portuguese?

On a vaguely related note, do we know if the original was written in Spanish and then it was translated into everything else?

Edited by mrwarper on 21 January 2014 at 2:32pm



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