Re: Translating docs (was: Hiring and Tech Writing 101)

Subject: Re: Translating docs (was: Hiring and Tech Writing 101)
From: Andres Heuberger <andresh -at- FXTRANS -dot- COM>
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 13:13:23 -0500

>Joaquim Baptista wrote
>
>> From the point of view of a Portuguese, Brazilian
>> translations suck big
>> time, specially when done by Brazilians. It is so bad, that I really
>> prefer an English version to a Brazilian one.

I fully agree with that. For all intents and purposes, Brazilian and
Continental Portuguese are two distinct languages. A native of one country
can obviously read and comprehend the other but it is not possible to have
a native speaker of Portugal translate into Brazilian Portuguese or vice
versa.

While the same is true for other languages used across countries and
continents (e.g., Spanish, Chinese, and, to a lesser degree, English), the
issue is more pronounced with Portuguese. Joaquim's experience is typical
-- most users in such a situation would prefer the English documentation.

The only solution really is to have two separate Portuguese versions.
That's if each market is large and/or important enough to warrant the
expense of translating.

Andres Heuberger


----------------------------------
ForeignExchange Translations, Inc.
Multilingual Compliance Management
888.454.0787 http://www.fxtrans.com


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