Working languages:
English to Portuguese
Portuguese (monolingual)
Paula Pereira
Responsibility, Quality, Commitment

Torres Vedras, Lisboa, Portugal
Local time: 23:06 WEST (GMT+1)

Native in: Portuguese 
Send email
  • PayPal
  • Send message through ProZ.com MSN IM
Feedback from
clients and colleagues
on Willingness to Work Again info
4 positive reviews

English > European Portuguese translator | Promote Your Page Too




Translator’s Lament – A Poem
(With apologies to sticklers for accurate rhymes and scansion)

To be a translator, believe me it’s sad
To be a translator you have to be mad.
Who else would sit all alone in a room
Encased in loneliness more like a tomb?

Who else would fondle a microphone cable
Or typewriter keyboard when perfectly able
To fondle some better more pliant device?
(It happens to others, they say it’s quite nice.)

Who else would apply so much love, care, devotion
To something that is another man’s notion?
Who else would spend hours to seek out one word
Just to ensure he writes nothing absurd?

Who else would read carefully through some epistle
Produced by a half-wit who had better whistle
Than write rotten copy that doesn’t mean much,
Yet expects a translation in, say, perfect Dutch?

Who else would accept that every job’s hot
When he knows jolly well that it’s probably not.
And flog himself silly to see the work through
Then wait for three months not collecting one sou?
(…)
And yet it’s a challenge which on reflection
Provides enormous job satisfaction.
Those who enjoy it will never desert
The odd fascination of the “foreign” word
-Wort, oh what the hell…

John H. Hayes
The Incorporated Linguist
1982








More translators and interpreters: English to Portuguese   More language pairs