Fado e jovens / Fado and youth

Depois da nosso carro falha a sua IPO, paramos num café. O café é servido com duas saquetas de açúcar. As saquetas têm uma foto de uma mulher com grandes óculos de sol e a mensagem 'Celebração do centenário de nascimento de Amália'. Quando pago ao balcão pergunto, no meu português lento e deliberado Quem era Amália? O jovem responde Uma cantora. Uma cantora de fado. A preferida de sufufufnufah. Não consigo entender algumas palavras, por isso repito o que ele poderia disse para ver se percebi o significado: Ela é a sua cantora de fado favorita? Ele responde Não é isso. Não gosto dessa música. Mas para as pessoas que gostam, diz-se que ela é a melhor. Acrescenta em inglês com um sorriso The best!

O primeiro ano, foram apenas os jovens que me mencionaram o fado. E nenhuma deles gostou. Depois uma ou duas pessoas sugeriram fadistas contemporâneos de que gostaram - Cuca Roseta, Gisela João, Deolinda. Mas isto era raro.

After our van has failed its MOT we stop at a cafe. The coffee is served with two sachets of sugar. The sachets have a photo of a woman with large sunglasses and the message ‘Celebração do centenário de nascimento de Amália’ (Celebration of the centenary of Amália’s birth). When I pay at the counter I ask, in my slow deliberate Portuguese Who was Amália? The young man replies (also in Portuguese) A singer. A fado singer. Sufufnufah favourite. I miss a few words, so I repeat what he might have said to see if I’d got the meaning: She is your favourite fado singer? He answers, still in Portuguese No, I don’t like this type of music. But for people who do, she’s said to be the best. Then he adds in English, with a smile, The best!

For the first year, it was only young people who mentioned fado to me. And none of them liked it. Then one or two people suggested contemporary musicians that they liked - Cuca Roseta, Gisela João, Deolinda. But this was rare.

Comments

Phatic rhythm

My boss likes to talk. He doesn’t need an interlocutor, he needs an audience. As there’s not much call to respond during these daily discourses it’s possible to pay attention to how he structures his speech. Linguistics uses the term phatic communication to describe speech that has a social function rather than an informative one. The Open University describes phatic openings to conversations as an ‘invaluable means of establishing relations before getting down to the real purpose of the encounter’. Here are some of the phatic openings that my boss and other colleagues use (I live in Portugal so these phrases are in Portuguese; I've put an approximate translation in brackets after each one): Eh pá (Hey), Pá (Hey), Olha (Look), Ora bem (Well then), Pronto (Ready), É assim (It’s like this). These are often the first thing uttered during an exchange. They request the other person’s attention and signal that things are ready to roll. They mean Please listen to me; I have somethi...

Apple tree is the best translation for ameixoeira

I have been completing first drafts of the last few poems in Aberto todos os dias by João Luís Barreto Guimarães. In my experience, translating poetry involves a negotiation between sense and sound. The words I choose need to communicate a meaning close to the Portuguese original, and also a similar rhythm and sound patterning. There’s some adjusting to be done: swapping a word for a synonym with one extra syllable, or with one less. Swapping a word for a synonym whose vowel sounds complement an existing pattern in the line. It reminds me of being a dressmaker making small tucks or opening seams in a garment to get the best fit. The acrostic is a literary form where such subtle alternations are inadmissible. Guimarães’s poem 'Introdução à poesia' ('Introduction to poetry') describes a group of fruit trees planted so that the first letter of each spells out the word CALMA (in English, CALM): Cerejeira, Ameixoeira, Limoeiro, Macieira, Ameixoeira. Translating this list ...

a o a the the the

When translating, there are always textures in the source language which cannot be directly replicated in the target language. Moving from Portuguese to English, gender is one such texture. Every noun in Portuguese is either feminine or masculine (which is the case in many other languages too) while English only has gendered nouns in special cases. I have been translating João Luís Barreto Guimarães’s collection Aberto todos os dias from Portuguese into English. I noticed a pattern at the start of the poem ‘Aquela garça ali’ (or ‘That heron there’) . The first six nouns are alternately feminine and masculine. The nouns are: a garça, o bote, a curva, o rio, a cidade, o fim. (In English this would be: the heron, the boat, the curve, the river, the city, the end). Since every noun in Portuguese – whether animate, inanimate, concrete, abstract – is gendered, gender can seem arbitrary, not carrying significant meaning. To me the gender of a noun stands out ‘as though each ...

Living not at home

Search This Blog