Portuguese Translation
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Posted On :
May-17-2011
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Article Word Count :
634
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Portuguese is the seventh most spoken language in the world, according to Ethnologue (16th Edition, 2009), with more than 178 million speakers, mainly in Brazil. It is one of the European Union’s official tongues, as well as of the African Union and the Organization of American States. When Portuguese explorers sailed to distant lands in the 16th and 17th centuries, they established their mother tongue in the orient, Africa and the New World. Today, several countries of Africa use Portuguese as
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Portuguese is the seventh most spoken language in the world, according to Ethnologue (16th Edition, 2009), with more than 178 million speakers, mainly in Brazil. It is one of the European Union’s official tongues, as well as of the African Union and the Organization of American States. When Portuguese explorers sailed to distant lands in the 16th and 17th centuries, they established their mother tongue in the orient, Africa and the New World. Today, several countries of Africa use Portuguese as a lingua franca, and residents in Goa, East Timor and Macau speak it as well. In Latin America, Portuguese is the official language of Brazil. Of its nearly 194 million inhabitants, most speak a dialect of Portuguese.
The language evolved from the Iberian dialect of Vulgar Latin spoken by the Roman soldiers who occupied the territory for centuries. In the second century BC, survivors of the destruction of Carthage infiltrated Portugal from the south, bringing certain Arabic influences, largely seen in vocabulary rather than grammar and syntax. The structure of the language remains essentially a direct descendant from Latin. For that reason, it is said to have more grammatical commonality with Italian than does Spanish. Pronunciation is distinctly more nasal than Spanish, and vowels are often shortened. Thus, Spanish is somewhat intelligible to Portuguese speakers, but the reverse is not true. The written languages are mutually intelligible to educated readers. Portuguese was relatively unaffected by the invasions of the Visigoths and the Moors in the first millennium of the current era. Colonial accents and dialects vary widely from continental Portuguese, and are often not readily comprehensible to European speakers.
Portuguese translation must be adjusted to the needs of the client. Most translators consider Brazilian Portuguese translation to be a different service from continental Portuguese translation, given the extraordinarily wide difference in vocabulary, spelling and syntax between the two. The difference is considered to be much starker than, say, the difference between British English and North American English. Brazilian Portuguese has adopted a large number of words from indigenous languages, as well as from African dialects spoken by slaves up to 1888. Wide regional differences can be seen in the way Portuguese is spoken in Brazil, in as much Brazilian Portuguese translation is quite a different service than European Portuguese translation.
The far south shows influences from the neighboring Hispanic tongues as well as traces of German, Italian and Japanese, spoken by immigrants during the last century. Towards the north, the influence of African and indigenous contributions is more marked, as well as the distinctive sing-song of the predominant accent. A few words entered the language thanks to the influence of the English, during a time when England and Portugal had an alliance to counteract the power of Spain in the New World. English engineers executed infrastructure projects in Brazil, bringing with them their own terms. For example, a streetcar in São Paulo is called a “bonde,” which derives from the “bonds” that the English floated to finance the construction of the system. A “forró” is an evolution of “for all” and is a dance party to which everyone, even the locals, were invited. It is now a particularly active folkloric dance step. Modern terms, like “approach” and “Walkman,” have slipped into the local idiom without any resistance.
Meanwhile, the Portuguese spoken in Europe remains much like the Galician language of centuries ago. It has modernized over the years with new words, of course, but the relatively small number of native speakers and the restricted area (when compared to the New World and Asia) have kept it from changing in the same dynamic ways as its Brazilian relative. It is especial to remember that Brazilian Portuguese translation should not be performed by linguists who perform Portuguese translation and vice versa.
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Article Source :
http://www.articleseen.com/Article_Portuguese Translation_62336.aspx
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Author Resource :
Brazilian Portuguese translation is a challenging language with many low quality service providers so be sure to employ only top Portuguese translation specialists.
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Keywords :
Portuguese translation, Brazilian Portuguese translation,
Category :
Business
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Business
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