Translating To and From

Of late, I have been running behind; time management is not my talent, and I will sometimes schedule too many activities over the course of a day and night only to find myself so tired I’m ready to pass out where I stand.  This week, I am pacing myself, but I fully expect by tomorrow I will be racing around the house madly like usual.  That being said, I’ve been working on translating my own work to Portuguese and Portuguese poems in English.  

First is a poem by Portuguese poet, Eugénio de Andrade.  This is such a short and simple poem, but I think the beauty is in the simplicity.

"Fão Nocturne" autor, Eugénio de Andrade

De palavra em palavra
a noite sobe
aos ramos mais altos

e canta

o êxtase do dia.

In English:

Word by word

night climbs

to highest branches

and sings

the ecstasy of day.

Régis Bonvicino, of São Paulo, is a contemporary poet.  To date, he has at least 12 volumes of published poetry, and I find myself curious to know more about his writing.   Since these are my personal translations, I cannot promise accuracy or that the intent of the poet is matched, but these are some of the poems that are staying with me lately.  Words like mesmo have multiple meanings, all of which make sense to native speakers in context; please, if you notice a translation that seems wildly inaccurate, don’t hesitate to tell me.

"Não Nada"  autor, Régis Bonvicino

Não nada ainda do outro

semelhante ainda ao mesmo

mínimo ainda o outro

ele mesmo não ainda outro

de um mesmo morto outro

insulado em seu corpo

Vincos dos mesmo ainda

no íntimo do outro tampouco

cicatrizes unem

tatuagens dissipam

antenas clavadas, em tinta

cacos do outro estilhaços do outro

Uma borboleta fixa encobre

cicatrizes num corpo

In English:

"No Nothing" 

No nothing still from the other

similar still to the same

minimal still the other

selfsame still not the other

of a selfsame dead other

insulated in the body

creases still of the same

intimate still even not yet

scars unite

dissipate tattoos

clavate antennas in ink

other shards of shrapnel from the other

fixed butterfly covers

scars on the body

The last piece is my own, short and to the point, but it’s also my first real attempt to translate poetry I’ve written to Portuguese.  I think I am pleased with the result, though I fully expect to change it at least a thousand times.  Since much of my work is free verse, I find myself thinking a lot about the purposely odd structure; I wonder will it even translate to something meaningful?  It's very possible I've translated my own words to say, "Please, purchase a chinchilla, a cake, and three apples on your way home."  

"In Between" author, Tara Saint-Clair

in spaces between,

sinking.

caught in quiet insistence,

a voice rarely heard

belongs in this mind,

memorized.

the echo warming.

rendering cries 

in stillness

as the space ceases,

searching hands,

In Portuguese:

"Entre"

nos espaços entre

a queda.

preso em insistência tranquila,

uma voz raramente ouvida,

pertence esta mente,

memorizado.

o eco me aquece.

assustado chorando,

na tranquila,

as extremidades do espaço,

procurando.

All right, it’s time to dig in and do some real research.  Food.  I was talking with friends today, and a couple of us realized food is difficult to describe, especially if you’re talking about a food that’s not always available everywhere.  Explaining deviled ham to M was a treat, especially after laughing over a picture of a ham-cat dressed as a devil.  Since he's unfamiliar with American foods, I had explained why the cartoon was kind of amusing.  Yeah, there is some weird stuff in this world.  There he is!  The deviled HamCat.

Shoving all that aside, I’m looking for Brazilian recipes; our one local Brazilian restaurant doesn’t serve food from Brazil so much as they offer foods that American travel shows feature as being from Brazil but are totally Americanized.  What little I have discovered-and this I expected-is food varies from region to region.  Again, Brazil and the US share a commonality.  It is one of the blessings from which we do benefit by living in large, culturally diverse countries.  While you will always be able to find burgers and pizza in the US, you can also find French influenced creole cooking, the meat and potatoes of the Mid-West, barbecue that varies region to region, Maine’s lobster rolls, any of our “Chinatowns”, and so much more.  Like I said, blessed in cultural diversity.  Soooooooo…  I’m thinking of tackling Brazil’s cuisine by looking into the different regions of the country one at a time versus the entire country at once, and I’ll probably be checking out some old episodes of Tony Bourdain.  The man knows food.  

All of this searching has made me think a lot about my mother.  (Hello, Mom, if you’re reading this.)  She cooked on a tight budget, something most of us in life understand.  Things weren’t always easy for her, but I never knew they were hard for my parents until I was much older.  Our meals were simple, always delicious, and I couldn’t understand why my friends thought it was so weird my mom made her own noodles.  She did it because it tasted better and was less expensive.  She made a lot of her own breads, too.  We always had a hot breakfast before going to school, and I thought it was terrible we didn’t get cold cereal!  This is where I admit to being a fiend for cold cereal of any kind.  Except for Trix.  They taste like Lemon Pledge smells.  If you’re not familiar with Trix or Lemon Pledge, one is a brightly colored and possibly toxic food for children here in the US, and the other is furniture cleaner.  Mmmm, delicious!  Yeah, those are not two things that should be juxtaposed, and somehow Trix did it.  (Please don’t sue me, General Mills, I have nothing to offer you but advice, which I’ll give for free. Make better cereal.)    Anyway, back to my mother and her cooking, and  yes, Mom, I know we were really lucky to have you there cooking breakfast for us every morning.  

In the spirit of asking for recipes you might know of or links you know are good, I’m going to share one of my mom’s specialities.  Chicken and rice.  Yes, I eat mostly vegetarian dishes, but this one is a family favorite, and even I will take a bite of it now and then.

Chicken Stock: 

whole chicken

enough water to cover the chicken and veggies plus a little extra

2 onions, quartered

carrots, four or five, also quartered

celery, 1 or 2 whole sticks, quartered

bay leaf, one to two depending on size

peppercorns, a tablespoon

rosemary, a good sized sprig

garlic if you want, but I don’t always add it

salt, I add a spoonful, which I don't measure

onion skins, darker the better

Cook at a simmer until the chicken falls off the bone; remove the chicken for later.  Simmer the stock a couple of hours, strain it, skim away the fat if you’re not into chicken fat, and reduce the stock.  It should be deep gold iin color if you used a few onion skins making the stock.

That stock?  Use it instead of water for cooking your rice.  Save the excess 

Chicken and Rice: 

Remove all the meat from the chicken; it should fall apart easily.  Set it aside while the rice cooks and you chop the veggies.  Chop and sauté one large whole onion, four to five carrots, two celery sticks, maybe half a pound of mushrooms, crushed garlic, salt, pepper, and when the rice is cooked, you’re going to add all those yummy veggies and shredded chicken to it. You may need some of the extra broth.  If you’re like a couple of people I know, you might want to turn the broth into gravy since everyone could use gravy.  Okay, probably not, but in all fairness to my gravy loving friends, that stuff is pretty good when it’s done right.

Mix the chicken, rice, veggies, and pour it into a large serving dish.  Some people bake their chicken and rice after already cooking it, but if everything is well cooked, I like my veggies with a bit of crunch.  If I want to eat food soft enough to be from the blender, I’ll just use the blender.

There you have it.  My my mom’s chicken and rice.  If you are like my son, apply hot sauce liberally!  Now to find a couple recipes for some of the foods friends from Brazil have mentioned!  Kel, I still think that risotto you showed me is possibly the best looking risotto I've seen. 

Language Learning in Movie Watching

Learning a language with someone has been an unexpected joy.  I’ve met some really nice people since I decided to learn Portuguese, and one of them, Kel, lives in Brazil and has spent many hours with me over the past three or four weeks as we learn together.  He is a self-motivated learner, and I’ve noticed him taking huge leaps forward in pronunciation as well as grammatical structure.  As his English improves, I find I want to drive myself forward to reach new goals.  Right now, we learn together using a mix of Portuguese and English, but the plan is to eventually structure our conversations speaking half the time in Portuguese and half in English.  It will be really good to get to that conversational point.  As my skills get better, I’m taking a lot of Kel’s advice to heart.

One point especially, I need to do a lot more listening.  Today I’m devoting my energies to writing, studying, and listening to Portuguese only.  Tomorrow I’ll likely be doing the same, but the more words I can pick out at faster speeds, the better my brain works.  I find if I skip a day or two of listening, I fall behind quickly.  Sadly, some of the streaming services don’t offer much in Portuguese, though I have found some excellent films like Cidade de Deus (City of God) and Abril Despedaçado (Behind the Sun).  

Both films are well done with lovely acting, but both films are also incredibly sad.  Cidade de Deus takes place during the 1960’s when tenement housing was being restructured.  It is based on the true story of photographer Wilson Rodrigues.  He grew up in the “City of God”, project housing built in Rio de Janeiro to force the city’s poverty stricken a little further away from the more well-to-do.  We see a lot of this in the US, and one of our most famous examples is the now demolished Cabrini Greens of Chicago, Illinois.  (Cabrini was featured in the horror movie Candyman if you'd like to see what it looked just before it was demolished.)  I genuinely enjoyed Cidade de Deus; it was also very difficult to watch knowing the outcome of the lives of many of the people depicted.  The violence was extreme, and as the film continued, it only escalated to a pinnacle.  That defining moment was incredibly heartbreaking because I knew, like many problems here in the US, some of the problems featured in the film are ongoing in Brazil.  I wondered how many mothers and fathers watched and thought about their own lost children.  The movie made me want to hug my son.

  

The second movie, Abril Despedaçado, is equally sad and deals with a feud between families.  Set in the 1940s, it's got a dusty feel about it that lends well to the scenes.  Again, this one is hard to watch as a parent.  I was reminded of the stories of the Hatfield and McCoy clans here in the Southern United State, and I walked away thinking violence can never ben an answer, but for some people, that is all they choose.  The acting was lovely, and there were a couple of scenes I watched thinking of them as “poetry in motion”.  This was a much quieter story built on the personal hardships of two families, and the choice one of the children makes.  Half a box of tissue later, I was good to go again, but talk about a tearjerker!  Of the two, I cried during both, but I can honestly say both films are worth the watch, especially Cidade de Deus.  I’m going to sit down and watch it again today because the film is that good, and I want to watch without the captions while listening. 

This brings me to my hardest task: finding films and television shows with the Portuguese captions.  Since I’m trying to hear the spoken words, I need more written Portuguese and no English.  I find there are some things on youtube, subbed and dubbed anime, but it would be nice to expand my repertoire.

Today I’ll be watching Inuyasha, a Japanese anime about a time traveling girl and half-demon.  I’ve seen it in both the Japanese and English, but watching it in Portuguese has been interesting.  The voice work is so different sounding it’s taking a bit of time to get used to it.  Still, I am having a lot of fun.