<center><font colour=blue><b>Localisms</b></font></center>

translation_articles_icon

ProZ.com Translation Article Knowledgebase

Articles about translation and interpreting
Article Categories
Search Articles


Advanced Search
About the Articles Knowledgebase
ProZ.com has created this section with the goals of:

Further enabling knowledge sharing among professionals
Providing resources for the education of clients and translators
Offering an additional channel for promotion of ProZ.com members (as authors)

We invite your participation and feedback concerning this new resource.

More info and discussion >

Article Options
Your Favorite Articles
Recommended Articles
  1. ProZ.com overview and action plan (#1 of 8): Sourcing (ie. jobs / directory)
  2. Réalité de la traduction automatique en 2014
  3. Getting the most out of ProZ.com: A guide for translators and interpreters
  4. Does Juliet's Rose, by Any Other Name, Smell as Sweet?
  5. The difference between editing and proofreading
No recommended articles found.

 »  Articles Overview  »  Art of Translation and Interpreting  »  Interpreting  »  
Localisms

Localisms

By Marcia R Pinheiro | Published  12/18/2013 | Interpreting | Recommendation:RateSecARateSecARateSecARateSecIRateSecI
Contact the author
Quicklink: http://mlt.proz.com/doc/3952
Author:
Marcia R Pinheiro
Australia
English to Portuguese translator
 
View all articles by Marcia R Pinheiro

See this author's ProZ.com profile
Linguists get impressed with Localisms: that capability of human beings of continuously innovating in Language.

Maybe converting from one language to another is like putting the dictionary inside of a machine: like magic, all is converted to the target language.

The lexicon brings bread.

That is easy: bread is something that is associated with sandwiches.

There are several types of bread: rye, multigrain, wholemeal, white, and so on.

To the side of complexity, there is unleavened/biblical bread (Crossway Bibles, 2001).

Some groups of people share a secret code, something like a pocket dictionary that they wrote themselves.

There is a place called Rio Grande (Broad River), in the South of Brazil, where they have decided to call our Australian rolls pao particular (pao is bread).

The rest of Brazil thinks that particular means private, and, since private bread does not make sense to those, they would be lost in the bakeries of Rio Grande until a local told them what pao particular is.

If they said cacetinho instead, the seller would be lost in the same manner.

Cacetinho is a localism from Rio de Janeiro, and it means little dick or little baton,.

That is actually the diminutive of cacete, which means dick or baton.

Cacete may also mean boring.

True communication, in human kind, can only be a random process of luck: if the person who receives our message understands what we mean, God was by there… .

References:


Crossway Bibles. (2001). Unleavened Bread. Retrieved December 13 2013 from http://www.openbible.info/topics/unleavened_bread









Copyright © ProZ.com, 1999-2024. All rights reserved.
Comments on this article

Knowledgebase Contributions Related to this Article
  • No contributions found.
     
Want to contribute to the article knowledgebase? Join ProZ.com.


Articles are copyright © ProZ.com, 1999-2024, except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.
Content may not be republished without the consent of ProZ.com.