Portuguese Translation

Where the pronoun goes: two continents, two habits

The gap between the two great areas in which this language is used is not confined to vocabulary, as most people assume. The most visible split concerns where personal pronouns fall in relation to the verb: in one usage the pronoun comes after the verb, in the other before it. A pronoun placed on the wrong side does not make an official sentence unintelligible, but it declares in the opening line which part of the world the text belongs to.

Forms of address come on top of that. The pronoun on which polite address is built, and the verb form that pronoun calls for, differ between the two usages; the form that sits naturally in one reads in the other as either too formal or unsuitably familiar. In contracts and petitions this is a question of validity, not of style.

Spelling brings differences of practice over the dropping of silent consonants and the use of hyphens. Both spellings of a given word are correct, yet finding the two of them inside one document shows that the text was assembled from two separate sources.

Where administrative terms part company

Institutions, tax numbers, company types and notarial acts go under different names in the two usages. Describing the function instead of supplying a word-for-word equivalent keeps the document readable whichever country it travels to.

Item	Risk	Sound approach
Tax number	Treating the two countries’ numbers as one and the same	Carrying the source number across together with its name
Company type	Translating the abbreviation	Leaving the abbreviation and explaining the type
Notarial act	Equating it with the procedure in Türkiye	Setting out the scope of the act
Higher education degree	A one-word equivalent	Defining it by duration and credits

Two separate sources of demand

Demand running towards Europe comes from migration and education. Residence applications call for proof of income, housing contracts, health insurance and criminal record certificates; university applications call for diplomas, academic transcripts and course descriptions. In family reunification files, civil registry records are expected to form an unbroken chain.

Towards the Americas, demand is mostly commercial. Trade in agricultural produce, aviation, automotive parts and construction materials brings certificates of origin, analysis reports, agency agreements and letter of credit correspondence. In industrial investment, technical specifications and installation instructions make up a steady volume.

The one item common to both directions is medical documentation; treatment reports and prescriptions are translated on condition that medicines are given under the names of their active substances.

The language of recognition for degrees and professional titles

Higher education degrees go by different names in the two areas of usage, and their durations do not overlap exactly either. Rather than translate the name of the degree, then, one writes down what can be measured about it: how many years it ran, how many credits it carried and the programme under which it was awarded.

Professional titles are a more delicate matter. In fields such as engineering, architecture, medicine and law, the right to use the title depends on registration with a professional body. Writing the local equivalent of the title straight into the translation gives the impression that the holder is registered in that country, whereas the document evidences an educational qualification and nothing more.

The sound approach is to carry the title across in the form it takes in the source document and to define not its equivalent but the course of study behind it. The unit conducting the recognition assessment reaches its own decision in any case.

Records with several surnames, and dates

In the naming tradition of this language people carry more than one surname, and those surnames come down from the mother’s side and the father’s. Their order differs from the practice of neighbouring languages, which is why translation never rearranges them; the sequence in the source document stands.

The conjunctions and particles that appear between surnames are part of the name as well; dropping them or turning them into capitals breaks the identity match. Since Turkish documents carry a single surname, form fields that expect several are not filled in with invented information; the translation shows plainly that the source document has one surname only.

Dates are written as day, month name and year, with particles set between them, and the month name begins with a lower-case letter. When you send your document, be sure to state which country it is going to; the term set and the spelling convention are chosen accordingly. See your quotation and delivery date straight away, or look over the unit rates first.

The information here is general in nature; the level of approval required in this language varies with the destination country. We recommend checking the current position with the authority that will handle your case.