Shoutbox

Hello there.

This is a matter that should not be discussed in such a superficial way.

To start on, I believe that even KeyStorm, from Spain, noticed that there is no translation for "restaurante" from brazillian to portuguese, because it's the same word on both countries. I felt extremely shocked and offended when you posted "Casa de Pasto" as our translation. I mean, naming restaurant as a cow sty (chiqueiro), or cow granary (celeiro onde as vacas comem)? It's undoubtly a clear hostile attitude and not a mistake as you want us/others to believe. And that's not only because it's obviously wrong, but you are, as you several times claim to be, a medical doctor which leaves me petrified seeing that as such an experienced person, you have so poor knowledge of the portuguese language and country. And I'm not referring to exhaustive knowledge like how many flags we had throughout the history, but at least have the capacity to use common sense to search if the "translation" for restaurant or anything else exists, and if so, if it is so offensive as that one you referred to...
I'm not a doctor, but 2 years away from being an mechanical engineer, if you're so interested in knowing the graduation of those you are talking to, and i assure you i know a great deal about the brazilian language, costumes, history, habits, and also my common sense wouldn't let me post such dramatic and offensive words as yours, anywhere.

Using a very simple document comparing software (http://www.grigsoft.com/wincmp3.htm), it's clear for anyone two things a) the differences are in fact rare and not significant (if you know how to read the language) and b) you didn't make a translation by hand from zero, but adopted and modified the official portuguese one. And I shall explain now.

The differences between our languages are more on the way they’re spoken and less on how they’re written.
For example, words like "contacto", "activar", "actualizar", in brazillian are written "contato", "ativar" and "atualizar" because the tonic syllable (I don’t know if this is the correct way to say this in english, it’s the syllable of every word that is louder that the others) on those words is said with more emphasis in Brazil than in Portugal, and so that's why the "c" disappears in such words when speaking, but must be there in order to be gramatically correct. Anyway, it's presence on those words will definitely not make brazilians don't understand it's meaning.
There's also the difference on the "status" translation, where we have "estado" and you reverted it to "status" again. Well, it's known that in Brazil many words are adapted (or realy are) from the english, like that one could probably be, and I believe that way you can more easily understand what it's referring to, but there are some reasons not to use it, namely a) there's a clear translation, so there's no reason not to translate it, b) the whole translation is supposed to be read by any kind of people, including doctors and children that only know it's mother language and c) the whole translation must be absolutely formal, direct to the point, and in absolute conformity with the grammar (I must also add that our translation is checked by a certified and experienced portuguese teacher apart from the team, so I can honestly tell you that our translation would certainly fit on any iso-certification rules )
Another difference is the "file" translation. We have it as "ficheiro" and you changed it to "arquivo" (archive). Well, obviously "ficheiro" is the most correct way to translate "file". Not only mixing file with archieve is not correct, because they mean different things, but if in some situation we actually need to translate the word "archieve" I think that using the same translation to two different situations, when there's the possibility to have them different, is not wise. And worse, changing everything would let many users confused.
One last difference is the "password" translation. For this word we actually had to search for some opinions before deciding to use "palavra passe". You changed it to "senha", which is also correct and it's even smaller than our final decision, but the reason not to use it is that "palavra passe" is more accurate to the situation, "senha" is not so catchy for first-time users and less experienced users on computres, not to mention that other portuguese software’s use "palavra passe" so we decided to keep the uniformity on this one.
After talking to some brazillian friends, the only actual difference to their way of speaking by looking to our translation is just the "c"s which is, in their own words, "irrelevant".
Your file also has some other minor changes that do not change at all the meaning or the structure of what we had on the Portuguese file, not making it any more understandable than what it already is.

The authenticity of your file is also non existent and fake, which for me and the Portuguese translation team could by itself be the only reason not to declare your file as an authentic brasilian translation. And I mean this because for someone that doesn’t know the language, there’s like 80% of your file that is similar, I mean, it’s the same translation that we did. And no, it’s not, by far, a coincidence. I noticed especially several very difficult parts that were assigned to me on some translation sessions, and I found them in the exact same way on your file. And some others that had to be discussed within the team are also in the very same way. And there are some reasons for almost everything that has the same translation on your file, and it’s not because it’s a coincidence, a) we invested many time reflecting and searching for the best words for each sentence/situation and it would be impossible for you to reach the same conclusions because you don’t master the language, b) you’re a different person, and different persons solve problems in different ways, so if I was someone else probably the final result could be different from what it is now and c) I know that in several lines a brazilian person would suggest doing the translation in a different way, but only in some of them you actually changed the content.
So you copied our work and adapted it to your needs, without even respecting the amount of work we had to solve every translation line, taking the best parts of it and the two or three parts we still are not sure if they will keep translated like that. I do not consider good sense, just not to say something worse, to come here and claim to have done “authentic” work on the file from scratch and willing it to become official. It’s not honest for your consciousness and your country.

Other important fact is the file structure. I don't know if you got to read the translation guidelines (http://files.msgplus.net/data/TranslationGuidelines.doc) because there are some entries that are in violation of some rules, which may led to corruption when loading the file and/or the entries with those errors when windows are opened. One example is: "CurrentLanguageA=Português (Brasil)", if you read the guidelines, you’ll find the mistake here.
Also to mention that this transl... adaptation was made without the care and sensibility  that is supposed to, because there's some entries that are bigger than it's supposed to, so they can't be completely read on the respecting windows.

There was, in fact, an official brazilian version on Plus! some years ago, I think around version 2.20. No one here in this forum knows why it suddenly stopped to be updated, but if after all this time there were no claims or demands for its coming back, this is one more proof that our work serves both nations with plenty satisfaction, without complain from any of them. And I can assure you, I can’t proof right now because I don’t have the time for that, that at that time (kinda repetitive!) both translation had a completely different structure. At that time it was in fact an authentic, impartial and unique team work, that obviously had everything correctly translated but anyone could see that there was no rip-off of any of the parts.

The 500 downloads that your file had in the last months is, of course, a number that allows us to reach some accurate conclusions about the opinion of users that come here to get it.
Those downloads do not directly mean that there is in fact people needing your file, because not only there’s the possibility that there are people that always look for a brazilian translation of the softwares they’re using probably without noticing there’s a “portuguese” one lower in the language list, but also there’s the chance that they are actually looking for a brazilian translation (and I don’t think it’s for the needing, but more the curiosity). And even if they need it, when they get into this forum and download your file, I don’t know what do they think about it but I assume they feel pretty neutral about it. Nothing very different from the original Portuguese file is present there. And I say this because on those 500 downloads there wasn’t ever one single person reporting it’s opinion that in fact there are deep (or superficial!), crucial differences between both language files, and so I conclude that adding your file would be, at least, redundant.

Just one last curiosity. There are much more writing differences in American English and British English than in our case. Just by remembering TV series, movies and sports, I can recall dozens of words that mean the same on english and american, but are differently written. For example, in the form of British/American: flat/apartment, tarmac/asphalt, lawyer/attorney, pub/bar, post/mail, note/bill, draw/tie, garden/yard, tyre/tire, catalogue/catalog, theatre/theater, analyse/analyze and the most famous colour/color and license/licence.
There are also many differences on the spelling of past tenses of verbs like dreamt/dreamed, strived/strove, which is a major difference that isn’t even enough to create two English language files, that doesn't happen in the brazilian-portuguese case where you’re only talking about synonyms that are known on both places.

I had said this before and I repeat it again, you didn’t translate this software, you ripped off our work. You are not respecting, and even violating, the devotion we gave to our work and it is not acceptable that you get credited for doing a find/replace job under our file and claiming for its authenticity.

With best regards,

Gonçalo Ferreira