Mais livros no metro

Escrevi num post em junho que reparo os títulos dos livros que pessoas leem no metro.

Adoro a promiscuidade de interesses: desenvolvimento pessoal, livros do booktok, espiritualidades, romances clássicos russo, odisseias eróticas. Nos dias atipicos em que vejo dois ou três livros na carruagem à minha volta, parece uma biblioteca ambulante. Calam-se! Não incomodem os leitores.

sexta-feira 21 junho, 22.31
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White nights (versão inglesa)

terça-feira 2 julho, 17.50

Colleen Hoover, Tarde demais

quarta-feira 3 julho, 10.11

David Foster Wallace, A piada infinita

segunda-feira 9 julho, 08.12
Kiera Cass, A seleção

terça-feira 9 julho, 19.17

Sergio Viega, O quente aconchego da mãe negra

sexta-feira 12 julho, 08.29
Robert Kiyosaki, Pai rico, pai pobre

Aldous Huxley, Admirável mundo novo

segunda-feira 2 setembro, 08.49

Carla Madeira, Tudo é rio

quarta-feira 4 setembro, 19.50

Bárbara Barroso, Ponha o seu dinheiro a trabalhar para si

terça-feira 10 setembro 17.01

Paula Hawkins, Um fogo lento

domingo 15 setembro, 15.45
José Saramago, Memórias do convento

terça-feira 17 setembro, 18.06

Colleen Hoover, Amor cruel

terça-feira 8 outubro, 07.24

Comentários de Ellen G White

segunda-feira 21 outubro, 16.51

Tara Westover, Uma educação

segunda-feira 28 outubro, 07.13

Valérie Perrin, Os esquecidos de domingo

quarta-feira 6 novembro, 17.39

Elle Kennedy, Uma boa rapariga

sexta-feira 8 novembro, 07.26

Hermann Hesse, Siddharta

sexta-feira 8 novembro, 18.14

Yann Martel, A vida de pi

sexta-feira 8 novembro, 18.39

Freida McFadden, A criada

terça-feira 12 novembro, 17.48

Nora Roberts, Todas as possibilidades

quinta-feira 21 novembro, 09.08

Carlos Alberto F de Almeida, O românico

sexta-feira 22 novembro, 18.56

Guillaume Dustan, The Works of Guillaume Dustan, volume 1 (versão inglesa)

quinta-feira 28 novembro, 09.16

Francisco Moita Flores, A fúria das vinhas

Fiódor Dostoiévski, Crime e castigo

António Costa Santos, Antes de 25 abril: era proibido

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 ...

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