No set pattern

 

Question: what Portuguese term is harder to translate than saudade? 

Answer: calçada portuguesa.

Calçada portuguesa has a clear and unambiguous meaning: ​​it is a paving surface made from small pieces of hard dense limestone with one flat face. The limestone comes in both black and ivory forms. The contrast between the two colours is used to form decorative patterns and mosaics. As well as having a specific definition, the practice of making these paved decorative surfaces has a global spread; as well as in former Portuguese colonies it occurs in Spain, Gibraltar, the US, Canada. Despite this, there’s no standard translation of calçada portuguesa into English. 

How do I know? Because I’ve been translating poems by João Luis Barreto Guimarães. The last poem of the collection Aberto todo os dias (Quetzal Editores, 2023) has an image of a child using the binary black/ivory division of a mosaic pavement to play a game. My first translation of the poem included these lines: ‘Tomorrow if / you see a kid crossing the calçada portuguesa / (on tiptoes over limestone / …’

When I asked friends how to translate calçada portuguesa, most suggested Portuguese pavement. These two English words aren’t animated by specificity and culture the way the words calçada portuguesa are. A dictionary check confirms this lack of inner life: neither creditable (Oxford, Merriam-Webster) nor slapdash (urbandictionary.com) dictionaries list Portuguese pavement as having a specific meaning in English (though the Cambridge dictionary had three different types of dog with Portuguese as a qualifying adjective).

The poem translation has been a collaborative effort. Joāo and I have met to check that the translations recreate some of the music of his originals. At our second meeting João picked out the phrase calçada portuguesa in my translation. He was not convinced that readers of English would understand the expression. He suggested checking how travel writers and tourism journalists translated it. 

I skimmed the travel sections of online newspapers, I read Lonely Planet, Bucket List Portugal, Rough Guide and recommendations by amateur travel enthusiasts. What stood out was the lack of consensus. One article used three different phrases: artistic use of cobblestones, black and white mosaic paving and cobbled pavements without settling on any one of them. Other terms I found were Portuguese cobblestone (cityguidelisbon.com), Portuguese artistic pavement, mosaic pavement (Geoheritage) and the least attractive solution, Portuguese pavement (Wikipedia). Some articles started by defining what calçada portuguesa means; once the Portuguese phrase had been loaded up with a specific meaning in English, it could function effectively through the rest of the English text. 

Without any consensus in the wider field of language use, how do you choose the best term? I returned to João’s poem and in the next draft of the translation I went for something which was short, yet also referenced the specific physical properties: ‘Tomorrow if / you see a kid crossing the cobblestone mosaic / (on tiptoes over limestone / …’

João said he liked it. The new phrase served the poem well and that is both the purpose and the reward.