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25th translation contest: "Alien first impressions" » English to Portuguese (EU)

Competition in this pair is now closed, and the winning entry has been announced.

Discussion and feedback about the competition in this language pair may now be provided by visiting the "Discussion & feedback" page for this pair. Entries may also be individually discussed by clicking the "Discuss" link next to any listed entry.

Source text in English

Imagine dining in a European capital where you do not know the local language. The waiter speaks little English, but by hook or by crook you manage to order something on the menu that you recognise, eat and pay for. Now picture instead that, after a hike goes wrong, you emerge, starving, in an Amazonian village. The people there have no idea what to make of you. You mime chewing sounds, which they mistake for your primitive tongue. When you raise your hands to signify surrender, they think you are launching an attack.

Communicating without a shared context is hard. For example, radioactive sites must be left undisturbed for tens of thousands of years; yet, given that the English of just 1,000 years ago is now unintelligible to most of its modern speakers, agencies have struggled to create warnings to accompany nuclear waste. Committees responsible for doing so have come up with everything from towering concrete spikes, to Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”, to plants genetically modified to turn an alarming blue. None is guaranteed to be future-proof.

Some of the same people who worked on these waste-site messages have also been part of an even bigger challenge: communicating with extraterrestrial life. This is the subject of “Extraterrestrial Languages”, a new book by Daniel Oberhaus, a journalist at Wired.

Nothing is known about how extraterrestrials might take in information. A pair of plaques sent in the early 1970s with Pioneer 10 and 11, two spacecraft, show nude human beings and a rough map to find Earth—rudimentary stuff, but even that assumes aliens can see. Since such craft have no more than an infinitesimal chance of being found, radio broadcasts from Earth, travelling at the speed of light, are more likely to make contact. But just as a terrestrial radio must be tuned to the right frequency, so must the interstellar kind. How would aliens happen upon the correct one? The Pioneer plaque gives a hint in the form of a basic diagram of a hydrogen atom, the magnetic polarity of which flips at regular intervals, with a frequency of 1,420MHz. Since hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, the hope is that this sketch might act as a sort of telephone number.

The winning entry has been announced in this pair.

There were 9 entries submitted in this pair during the submission phase, 7 of which were selected by peers to advance to the finals round. The winning entry was determined based on finals round voting by peers.

Competition in this pair is now closed.


Entries (9 total; 7 finalists) Expand all entries

Entry #31408 — Discuss 0
Nuno Couto
Nuno Couto
Portugal
Winner
Voting points1st2nd3rd
6515 x42 x21 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.073.13 (8 ratings)3.00 (8 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 2 users entered 4 "like" tags
  • 6 users agreed with "likes" (9 total agrees)
  • 3 users disagreed with "likes" (3 total disagrees)
empregado
Good term selection
Ana Cravidao
-2
+4
1
onomatopeias mastigatórias
Good term selection
Teresa Goncalves
É difícil comunicar sem um contexto comum.
Flows well
Ana Cravidao
-1
+5
2
ininteligível
Good term selection
Teresa Goncalves
Entry #31480 — Discuss 0
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
519 x47 x21 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.003.14 (7 ratings)2.86 (7 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 2 users entered 2 "like" tags
  • 1 user agreed with "likes" (1 total agree)
O empregado de mesa
Good term selection
Ana Cravidao
Entry #31552 — Discuss 0
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
489 x43 x26 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.303.20 (5 ratings)3.40 (5 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 3 "like" tags
  • 2 users agreed with "likes" (2 total agrees)
  • 1 user disagreed with "likes" (1 total disagree)
-1
+2
Imagine-se a jantar numa capital europeia cuja língua desconhece.
Flows well
Ana Cravidao
empregado
Good term selection
Ana Cravidao
Quando levanta as mãos para indicar rendição, eles acham que está prestes a atacar.
Flows well
Ana Cravidao
Entry #30823 — Discuss 0
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
387 x43 x24 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.753.75 (8 ratings)3.75 (8 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 1 "like" tag
  • 2 users agreed with "likes" (2 total agrees)
+2
O empregado quase não fala inglês
Flows well
Perfeitame​nte fluent​e em portu​guês europ​eu
Ana Cravidao
Entry #30703 — Discuss 0
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
305 x43 x24 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.833.83 (6 ratings)3.83 (6 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 2 "like" tags
O empregado
Good term selection
O empregad​o, o empre​gado de me​sa ou o em​pregado do​ restauran​te são tod​as traduçõ​es correta​s
Ana Cravidao
Os aldeões não fazem ideia do que pensar de si
Flows well
Ana Cravidao
Entry #30752 — Discuss 0
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
244 x43 x22 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.083.29 (7 ratings)2.86 (7 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 1 "like" tag
Faz sons de mastigar que eles supõem ser a sua língua nativa e, quando ergue os braços para se entregar, acham que vai atacar.
Flows well
Ana Cravidao
Entry #31600 — Discuss 0
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
173 x42 x21 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry2.913.00 (11 ratings)2.82 (11 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags


Non-finalist entries

The following entries were not selected by peers to advance to finals-round voting.

Entry #31454 — Discuss 0
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry2.862.86 (7 ratings)2.86 (7 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #30737 — Discuss 0
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry2.482.40 (10 ratings)2.55 (11 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags