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Working languages: English to Portuguese
|  reginakersten
Florianópolis, Santa Catarina Local time: 09:59 BRST (GMT-2)
Native in: Portuguese | |
Freelancer,  Verified site user | | Translation, Editing/proofreading | | Specializes in: | | Government / Politics | International Org/Dev/Coop | | Law (general) | Medical: Health Care | | Human Resources | Management | | History | General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters |
| Also works in: | | Business/Commerce (general) | Psychology |
More Less | | USD | | PRO-level points: 221, Questions answered: 196, Questions asked: 31 | Sample translations submitted: 1 | | English to Portuguese (EU): 7th ProZ.com Translation Contest - Entry #5444 |
| Source text - English
Winters used to be cold in England. We, my parents especially, spent them watching the wrestling. The wrestling they watched on their black-and-white television sets on Saturday afternoons represented a brief intrusion of life and colour in their otherwise monochrome lives. Their work overalls were faded, the sofa cover—unchanged for years—was faded, their memories of the people they had been before coming to England were fading too. My parents, their whole generation, treadmilled away the best years of their lives toiling in factories for shoddy paypackets. A life of drudgery, of deformed spines, of chronic arthritis, of severed hands. They bit their lips and put up with the pain. They had no option but to. In their minds they tried to switch off—to ignore the slights of co-workers, not to bridle against the glib cackling of foremen, and, in the case of Indian women, not to fret when they were slapped about by their husbands. Put up with the pain, they told themselves, deal with the pain—the shooting pains up the arms, the corroded hip joints, the back seizures from leaning over sewing machines for too many years, the callused knuckles from handwashing clothes, the rheumy knees from scrubbing the kitchen floor with their husbands' used underpants.
When my parents sat down to watch the wrestling on Saturday afternoons, milky cardamon tea in hand, they wanted to be entertained, they wanted a laugh. But they also wanted the good guy, just for once, to triumph over the bad guy. They wanted the swaggering, braying bully to get his come-uppance. They prayed for the nice guy, lying there on the canvas, trapped in a double-finger interlock or clutching his kidneys in agony, not to submit. If only he could hold out just a bit longer, bear the pain, last the course. If only he did these things, chances were, wrestling being what it was, that he would triumph. It was only a qualified victory, however. You'd see the winner, exhausted, barely able to wave to the crowd. The triumph was mainly one of survival. | Translation - Portuguese (EU)
Os invernos costumavam ser frios na Inglaterra e passávamos as tardes de sábado assistindo às lutas. Bem, era o que faziam os meus pais especialmente. Assistir às lutas na tv preto e branco significava para eles deixar que suas vidas monocromáticas fossem invadidas por breves momentos de entusiasmo e renovação. Suas roupas de trabalho estavam desbotadas, desbotado o revestimento do sofá, que não era trocado há anos, e desbotada também ia ficando a memória que tinham de si mesmos antes de virem para a Inglaterra.
Meus pais e toda sua geração tiveram os melhores anos de suas vidas pulverizados pelo trabalho penoso nas fábricas, em troca de salários infames. Uma vida de fadiga, de lesões na coluna, artrite crônica, de mãos enrijecidas. Mordiam os lábios para agüentar a dor. Nada mais lhes restava fazer. Tentavam se manter desligados de tudo aquilo – para ignorarem as humilhações dos colegas, para conterem-se diante da falação barulhenta dos chefes e no caso das mulheres indianas, para que não se deixassem abalar quando elas apareciam marcadas por surras que lhes davam os maridos.
Agüentar a dor, diziam a si mesmos, enfrentar a dor – lacerante nos braços, nas articulações lesadas dos quadris, nas costas contraídas por tantos anos sobre as máquinas de costura, nos nós dos dedos calejados pela lavação de roupa e nos joelhos reumáticos de esfregar o chão da cozinha com as cuecas velhas dos maridos.
Quando meus pais se sentavam para ver as lutas aos sábados à tarde - nas mãos uma xícara de chá de cardamomo com leite - eles iam em busca de diversão, de uma risada, mas queriam também é que o cara do bem vencesse o inimigo. Queriam que o brutamontes, que ali urrava a sua arrogância, recebesse o que merecia, pelo menos uma vez. Eles rezavam para que o cara legal não entregasse os pontos, estivesse ele na lona imobilizado por um golpe, ou contorcendo os rins em agonia. Pudesse ele agüentar um pouco mais, suportar a dor, ir até o fim. Ah! se ao menos ele conseguisse – a luta encarada desta forma - haveria chances dele vencer. Não seria, no entanto, uma vitória no seu melhor sentido, pois o que se veria em seguida era um vencedor exausto que mal conseguia acenar para a multidão.
Vitória, sim, por ter sobrevivido.
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More Less | | reginakersten glossary | | Other - Certificate of Proficiency in English - Michigan University | | Years of translation experience: 9. Registered at ProZ.com: Jan 2006. | | N/A | | N/A | | ABRATES | | Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Wordfast | | CV available upon request | 7th ProZ.com Translation Contest: English to Portuguese (EU)  [download] | | reginakersten endorses ProZ.com's Professional Guidelines (v1.0). | | About me No content specified | This user has earned KudoZ points by helping other translators with PRO-level terms. Click point total(s) to see term translations provided.
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Jan 12, 2011 |
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