Sumários
Upper Class bias language in English
17 Maio 2017, 14:00 • David Alan Prescott
Analysis of text outlining how certain vocabulary items and expression strings in English determine class. In some ways this class is the reverse side of the previous lesson. If a character in an English text refers to someone as a "cove", "chap" or "gent" it is clear to some native speakers that the person is of a certain class background. Demonstration that whenever we are translating a text in which a person speaks, such as a character in a novel, film, play or short story, the language that character uses -- including swearing, class biases and regionalisms -- is part and parcel of the building of the character. As far as possible this must be maintained in the translation. But it is not always possible.
Um Poeta Lírico text
15 Maio 2017, 14:00 • David Alan Prescott
Analysis of specific difficulties of translating a text by Eça de Queiroz from 1896 into English in 2017. How should we deal with the French expressions that Queiroz uses in italics, such as "bureau", when English did not do so at the time? In the text, Queiroz's narrator refers to breakfast as "almoço", as the character would have done at the time, given that "pequeno almoço" was not yet popular among upper class Portuguese society yet -- or at least had not reached Queiroz's narrator's idiolect. He also refers to "almoço", in Portuguese, as "lunch" in English, although this may have been incorrect on the part of the writer. Queiroz uses "bureau" and "lunch" for flavour in his descriptive text about a cosmopolitan Portuguese man who travels. What becomes of the passage (and of the character) if we eliminate these examples of flavour in our translation?
A aula não se realizou (visita papal)
12 Maio 2017, 14:00 • Hanna Marta Pieta
A aula não se realizou (visita papal)
Translation exercise
10 Maio 2017, 14:00 • David Alan Prescott
Analysis of possible manners of translating informal yet difficult issues such as "you" to a Portuguese equivalent. Difficulties in gender (and meaning) ambiguity in English in translations such as "my partner and I". Ways to avoid problems. Issue of the need to be or wisdom of being as informal in Portuguese as in the English equivalent, given that there is a socially more formal system of addressing people in Portuguese in Portugal and a slightly different but equally less formal system in Brazilian Portuguese.