Across My Desk: Sacred Hope

When books intended for disposal cross my desk I try to be attentive to the foreign language editions, always wondering if I might find a Portuguese-language title. True, it seldom happens as the University does not have a great focus on that language, but occasionally something appears and I quickly offer a donation to rescue it from neglect. These books are eventually sent to my relations in Angola to help populate the ISTEL library. Obviously, simply because a book is printed in Portuguese it doesn't mean it's useful to them, but they have so many English-language donations in their library (despite many students there not knowing the language) that I assume giving them any book in Portuguese may have a benefit to someone at some point down the road. After all, among a million-person local population, they have the largest library (and that's still not saying much).

One day I was casually preparing a book for disposal when my eye glanced over the back cover. "Um aniversario," it said. I paused. "A birthday?" I wondered. I quickly flipped through the book; English. I checked the title; English. I checked the author; ...vaguely Portuguese. I checked the country of publication; Tanzania. "Tanzania? Pretty sure they don't speak Portuguese there!" My hand wavered on whether to dispose of the book.

Finally I discovered a neat trick - one you can use in your own home - I read an extract from the book. Suddenly it became clear - this was a collection of poetry by an Angolan author which had been translated into English. Angolan poetry! I came that close to getting rid of it! Happily, I rescued it for my own collection.

The book is Sacred Hope by Agostinho Neto, who ultimately became the leader of the MPLA and president of Angola. I had never actually tried to read books written by Angolans (books dealing with Angola are uncommon in this part of the world) so here was an opportunity for insight into Angolan culture (at least, culture circa 1974).

I can't say that these poems have done much to expand my knowledge of the culture. They are primarily a litany of frustration, expressions of sorrow and outrage at the Portuguese who were then in charge of the country. Neto's thoughts seemed consumed by the struggle he was in (the poems were written from the 50s to the 70s and are very much in a singular tone). Perhaps post-independence Angolan poets had something else to say about their nation but at this time - mostly anger. Perhaps the most surprising thing to note were the many references to slavery, despite it having been abolished well before then. Neto wrote of slavery as something which was, to him, still alive. That holds up with other accounts I've read about life in African colonials - that the colonizers behaved like slave-masters.

The poetry is interesting primarily in an academic fashion and the book - well, it will stand on a shelf with my all-too-few other tomes on Angola.

Quadrinhos em Português 3: Scott Pilgrim

To conclude my look at the Portuguese-language comic books I've been using to help me study the language, I turn to the other comic I found for sale at Amazon.com. Surprisingly, it's Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim!

As a Canadian who elected to learn Portuguese, why not turn to a Canadian story which has been given a Portuguese translation? Of course, Scott Pilgrim was a big-time/small-time hit in the English-speaking world and led to a modestly underperforming motion picture. How well can a series steeped in North American pop culture references translate to an audience in Portugal? Good question!

Off the bat, you may notice the first volume "Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life" in English became "Scott Pilgrim na Boa Vida" in Portuguese. There may be connotations to the phrase local to Portugal which I don't understand, but the literal translation is "Scott Pilgrim: the Good Life," which really does a disservice to the original title. "Precious Little Life" speaks to Scott's sense of entitlement and lack of introspection, informing you a bit about his character before you ever read a page of the story. The Portuguese version lacks this subtle effect.

Scott Pilgrim indulges in a lot of slang which is muted in the translation: where Kim calls Stephen a "pussy boy" in English becomes "maraquinhas" (sissy); the meaning is similiar, but inexact. Fortunately, Sex Bob-Omb is intact; Crash & the Boys become "Crash & os Rapazes." This was probably a very challenging book for the translator to work on.

Of course, many recent additions to the English language such as "internet" have no Portuguese equivalent and use the same words. It's also interesting to note that the joke about Amazon.ca wasn't changed to a local version of the site, keeping the Canadian humour. Man, if the jokes about Toronto were arcane to readers in the US, I can only imagine how people in Portugal responded to this book!

Thank gooodness Scott Pilgrim became a large enough hit to warrant a Portuguese language version, one which can be easily obtained by anyone with internet access. And thus I take my leave of this subject, having reached this point where I'm puzzling through comic book pages, slowly translating them and trying to recognize the words and phrases by sight. Sometimes I succeed!

Quadrinhos em Português 2: Tintin

I had a plan. The next Portuguese-language comic book in my collection was going to be Blacksad, that beloved anthropomorphic animal detective series I've blogged about so often (and which remains one of the top search results for this blog). Sure, I was tempted to try and track down Brazilian copies of the Phantom (Fantasma) on ebay, but knowing Blacksad came from Spanish creators, I realized a Portuguese copy had to exist - and indeed, it does. I found an online book vendor based in Portugal who offered international shipping, asked my Angolan relations to check over the site to ensure it was reputable, then placed my order (including copies of XIII and some Marvel super hero books). Then I sat back to wait.

I didn't have to wait very long; the vendor soon got back to inform me they were cancelling my order. Yes, they did offer international shipping, but I think they were more comfortable shipping across Europe, rather than the Great White North. I felt despondent; where could I possibly go to find a Portuguese language comic book?

Amazon.com, as it turns out. I had completely forgotten about my old friend Tintin, whose books have, of course, been translated into every language spoken on Earth (and probably some geek has rendered them into Elvish). The USA's Amazon service includes many copies of Portugal's As Aventuras de Tintin, so I settled for a copy of Explorando a Lua (Explorers on the Moon), which is now the third Tintin book in my comics library: one in English, one in French and one in Portuguese - each one a different story!

I realized early on in life that Tintin was a "respectable" comic book; after all, only he and Asterix were elected worthy to reside not only upon the shelves of my junior high school library, but in the esteemed public library as well! (we did possess one copy of the Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Comics in the junior high library but it was reference-only). I believe I read every Tintin book before the end of junior high.

The first thing I did upon bending back the cover of Explorando a Lua was to hunt for Thompson & Thomson. Well aware that the duo were renamed from nation to nation while retaining the same joke (surnames which are homonyms), I quickly found in Portugal the duo are known as... Dupond & Dupont. That is to say, the original French names. Noting that Snowy was likewise named Milou as in the original pages, I wonder if perhaps the old practice of renaming the characters for each culture has been abandoned, with present-day translations seeking closer fidelity to the French originals (except for in North America where, no doubt, the Snowy and Thompson & Thomson monikers will endure).

One advantage to reading a Tintin book from Portugal is that it uses the version of Portuguese practiced in Angola by my relatives. The disadvantage is that the European version is extremely unpopular in North American so my texts, classes and apps have all been teaching me the Brazilian grammar and pronunciation. Largely it doesn't make a difference but there are moments where I'm taken aback to find phrases structured in a way other than how my Brazilian instructor guided me.

Overall I've been finding that comic books being largely conversational, my skills have been seriously challenged by the informal manners of speech found in Portuguese comics. This is good! I can probably study them for years as my fluency improves!

Three cheers for the ubiquitous Tintin! One more entry on Portuguese comics tomorrow!

Quadrinhos em Português 1: Private Eye

It's been some time since I last spoke about Brian K. Vaughan & Marcos Martin's digital comic book series Private Eye. During this interval, the series wrapped itself up after ten installments and it's been announced that a print collection is forthcoming - but seriously, when you can purchase the entire book for whatever price you like (even free) from their website, why bother with print?

Besides my adoration for the artwork of Marcos Martin, my interest was drawn to Private Eye by the presence of their Portuguese-language translations. Insofar as comic books did so much to help teach me how to read, I thought a Portuguese comic book would be a fun teaching aid. At this point in my attempt to learn the language I've exhausted all of the material provided by my employer's Continuing Education program and thus must educate myself.

I know some armchair quarterbacks on the internet are offering opinions as to whether bringing Private Eye to print is an admission of failure on the part of Vaughan & Martin. For myself, I spent a long time completely disengaged from the series because I forgot it was being published; that's the only real flaw I can see with the model they adopted - that it requires you to frequent their home page on a regular basis to keep up with the story.

Private Eye turned out to be a pretty simple story. Given the title of the series and the occupation of the protagonist I was led to believe it would be a detective series - but no, not really. There was a question as to what the villain was after, but was not much more than a MacGuffin. The story constantly shifted perspectives to show what the villains were doing so the protagonist basically played catch-up for ten chapters. It's a futuristic crime thriller, not a futuristic mystery.

One odd effect of the translation was that a pair of French assassins whose dialogue was printed in English with in the original were, naturally, translated into Portuguese for that version. However, the few times in which the duo spoke French in the original remained French in the translation. It all works, but it does make one wonder: how would a French version solve that issue?

In this scene above, Marcos Martin gave the lead female character a half-page panel to show off her outfit. The first time I read it I assumed the enlarged panel was intended to establish how taken the protagonist was with her beauty - but later, he turns out to be gay. So why the large panel? For the benefit of male readers? Or the benefit of Martin?

More thoughts about Portuguese-language comic books over the next two days.

"Confie mas confira, como dizia meu pai." Private Eye em Português

Continued from yesterday...

When I began studying Portuguese last year I made an effort to seek out comic books printed in Portuguese which might help me... but the internet failed to turn up many leads. To my immense pleasure, Brian K. Vaughan & Marcos Martin's Private Eye is sold in a variety of languages - even the ever-elusive Portuguese!

Of all the languages I would choose to learn, it had to be one seldom used in North America, sim? Print resources on Portuguese are lacking, especially in the European dialect I'm trying to favour. Although the internet has been very useful to me, very few online comic books offer Portuguese translations - and those Portuguese comics I have located were series I'd never heard of before (they probably originated in Brazil).

Having seen how Private Eye manages their translations, one wonders why every major publisher doesn't offer multiple language versions of their work? Surely the big companies are better able to afford these services than a little creator-owned digital book with a "pay what you like" donation box? As seen above, the finished project doesn't go to the trouble of translating advertisements, book covers and other English-language background details - it's just a matter of finding a decent translator for the dialogue balloons.

Best of all, thanks to the DRM-free nature of Private Eye I can read the English and Portuguese versions at the same time on my computer, running samples side-by-side. I'm certain to be back for more of Vaughan & Martin's series... if only to aid my pitifully poor vocabulário.