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.

According to this article, pharma companies that are eyeing global markets as an afterthought to U.S. and developed markets are losing out on major opportunities that come from thinking globally in the first place. Due to the extent of innovation coming out of some Asian pharmaceutical companies, the connection with a large U.S. pharma company won't even be necessary.

Overview

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 German, in an interview conducted with McElroy Translator Gerhard Preisser.

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

First off, a general observation: A good German translation of an English source text is not only a product of good linguistic skills in both languages on the part of the translator; it also depends to a smaller or greater extent on the content, specifically the degree to which a given text is steeped in cultural/societal idiosyncrasies. English texts that draw heavily on concepts or experiences that are foreign to the intended German reader will require more than a translation to have the same impact they possess in English. Some examples: Advertising material with liberal baseball analogies, biographical texts highlighting school and university degrees commonly offered only in the US, product literature highlighting devices mostly unknown in Germany (such as a food disposal).

Some comments about technical documents (such as user manuals):

• Clients should be aware that lengthy introductions common to US publications, expressing gratitude and appreciation for the customer for having bought a specific product, are considered somewhat ingratiating; a simple “we’re happy you bought our widget” will suffice perfectly.
• Technical documents produced in the US sometimes tend to be quite personal in tone—this does not translate well into German and should be avoided (no need to say “please”).
• Warranty information should reflect EU or German conventions and legal requirements; it is pointless to have finer legal points such as those regulating commerce between US states translated.
• Toll-free phone customer service phone numbers are of no special help to potential callers from abroad.
• Advising users of any given product to use non-metric tools (e.g. a “3/8 inch socket”) to manipulate non-metric devices/fasteners is rather pointless.

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

1. Unlike English, German is a highly declensional language, based on a system of a multitude of inflections and cases. For each word in each word class—noun, verb or adjective—there is a substantial set of possible inflections. This makes stemming considerably more complicated compared to English.
2. It is possible in German to build compounds by joining two or more words, e.g. “Haustür” (front door) or “Schulbusfahrer” (school bus driver). In theory, any number of combinations—noun+noun, adjective+adjective, adjective+noun, adjective+verb, verb+noun, etc.—is conceivable. A popular example is the word “Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitän”—captain commanding a steamboat on the [river] Danube.

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

Given the complex system of endings, it is not surprising that even native speakers of German with an average education occasionally get it wrong. Infamous trouble spots are the weak vs. strong declension of adjectives, correct endings of adjectives following certain indefinite numerals, verb forms in the subjunctive I, and strong vs. weak past participle forms of verbs. Yet mistakes of this sort, while relatively common, DO get noticed by discerning readers and anyone who thinks they have an above average grasp of the language (i.e. the vast majority of Germans holding post high school degrees), and they do cause irritation. Professional translators can be trusted to avoid such errors.

While declension and conjugation follow precisely and comprehensively defined rules, the issue of word building through compounding is by nature a bit more intuitive. Compounds lend themselves to the formation of perfectly acceptable neologisms; a police car is a “Polizeiauto,” the moon vehicle a “Mondauto,” and should there ever be a car made to ride on the surface of Venus, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be called a “Venusauto.” Compounds enlarge the available vocabulary almost endlessly, and I can think of dozens of perfectly legitimate compounds one won’t find in most dictionaries. Forming a compound, however, is not always as easy as taking one adjective/noun/verb and simply adding another adjective/noun/verb. Many require linking letters—such as s, es or er—and depending on the letter(s) chosen, the very same compound word may take on a different meaning: “Kinderkopf” is a child’s head, “Kindskopf” a childish person; “Geschichtenbuch” is a story book, “Geschichtsbuch” a history book.

The creation of compounds that make sense and are formed correctly is difficult to learn by a non-native speaker of German and, since compounds cannot always be verified by checking an available dictionary or glossary, a “finer point” of the language best left to experts.