Why English to Portuguese is harder than it looks
Obrigado changes with who is speaking. A man writes obrigado, a woman writes obrigada. It is the first thing a Portuguese speaker notices, and a short English “thanks” gives the translator nothing to go on, so it is worth checking on messages you send often.
Gender runs through the whole sentence. “I’m tired” is cansado or cansada, and every adjective around a noun agrees with it. English is almost entirely free of this, which means a two-word English message can expand into a Portuguese one with several decisions baked in.
English hedging sounds evasive in Portuguese. “I was just wondering if you might possibly have a moment” is polite English and strange Portuguese. Portuguese politeness is warmer and more direct at the same time. Running Concise over the message before translating usually gets you closer to how a Portuguese speaker would actually put it.
Brazil and Portugal are not interchangeable. Beyond vocabulary, Brazil favours você while Portugal uses tu with different verb endings, and the rhythm of a sentence differs. Deciding who you are writing to before you send matters more here than in most language pairs.
Written by Hardik Vegad, Co-founder, Translatify. Last updated .
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