The NY Times ran an article on its website recently proclaiming that interpreting is one of the hottest new careers going.

 While everybody else is talking about booming international markets for information technology, banking, jetliners and fast-food restaurants, who are the mechanics who keep the machinery of world trade humming? The people who enable speakers of English, French, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and every other language from Arabic to Zulu to understand one another, that’s who. As a result, a cottage industry of small and medium-size language-services companies is quietly flourishing in this country.

For the next few months, McElroy will be running a series of articles that highlight some of the characteristics of top languages used in doing business globally. This month, we look at Portuguese, in an interview conducted with McElroy translator Clarissa Surek-Clark.

What are some pitfalls to avoid, specific to this language, a client should be aware of when translating into this language?

Portuguese is a Romance language which ranks as the 7th language in the world in number of native speakers (with more than 200 million speakers the world over). Its regional varieties (or dialects) can be broadly classified as Continental, spoken in Portugal and bordering European countries; Brazilian, spoken by more than 180 million speakers in the largest country in South America; and African, spoken - often non-natively - in Cape Verde, Mozambique, Angola and, Guiné-Bissau, which more closely resembles Continental Portuguese in its grammar and pronunciation. Macau in China also has Portuguese as one of its official languages.

A client should be aware of regional differences among Portuguese speakers and hire translators who specialize in the particular market the product/document is going to reach. Between the larger division among Continental/African Portuguese on one side, and Brazilian Portuguese on the other, there are numerous grammatical and lexical differences, often more pronounced than the differences found between American and British English.

As a Romance language, Portuguese is closely related to Spanish. In the United States, Spanish-speaking translators sometimes claim to translate or interpret into Portuguese. When hiring a Portuguese translator, a client should request specific information about the Portuguese-language education or life experience of the translator being hired.

Another important pitfall to consider is the style/register used by translators when working on written documents. Although not in a diglossic situation, Portuguese shows vast differences between its written form and spoken variety, so a document that is meant to be in a written format should not closely resemble a spoken script.

What are characteristics of this language that are unique or different from English and/or other languages?

As a Romance language, Portuguese identifies its nouns with gender (a for feminine, o for masculine), and adjectives that refer to such nouns agree with their gender.

Another characteristic that is typical to Portuguese is verb conjugation. Each pronoun has its corresponding verb conjugation which changes depending on the time and mood of what is being said.

Continental/African Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese vary in the way that personal pronouns are used. In the former regional varieties, personal pronouns are more often hidden behind their respective verb conjugation. In Brazilian Portuguese, however, pronouns are plentiful and permeate even the written form of the language.

Portuguese speakers like to be animated when communicating, often speaking loudly, joking around and appearing to English speakers to be friendly and easy-going.

How do these characteristics make it important to use properly qualified, professional translators?

The societies in which Portuguese is spoken are predominantly modern with well-established political, economical and market systems. There is a high level of literacy in these countries and translation plays an important role in their publishing markets. Middle class Portuguese speakers are consumer-savvy, often well-traveled and keenly tuned into the international media through the Internet and cable TV.

Clients who are trying to market their products or services in Portuguese-speaking countries must use qualified, professional translators when creating their materials for use in such countries. Mistakes committed when communicating about their products or services may contribute to whether or not a company sinks or swims in such markets.

I recently wrote about the last living language of pictographs, and speculated whether such communication would see a revival with the myriad of icons we use today on our computers and mobile devices. Indeed, it appears there is a business that aims to do just that--create a language of icons.

Zlango is made up of over 200 icons divided into intuitive and memorable categories. Words, concepts or feelings can be expressed by the different icons.

This article explains the importance of integrating translation into the overall global brand strategy, and making it an integral component of the overall content life-cycle, rather than simply a post-edit, add-on function.

The service oriented approach to localizing web content allows organizations to drive global revenues by leveraging a multi-lingual content repository to enable more consistent, accurate, and more timely translations. When you can plan and act globally and yet provide local content in the local language, the world is your oyster.