Our Desk | Portuguese… And other languages

Renato Marques

A couple of days ago there was apparently a proposal at the Legislative Assembly (AL) follow-up committee on land affairs aiming to “give more importance” to the use of the English language in Macau and more specifically in matters of land.
But the proposal with which everybody in the room seem to have agreed to and signed, seems also to have lost its founding father/mother, since the president of the referred committee, Ho Ion Sang, admitted “not to know exactly who proposed the idea.”
Either way, according to Ho, the purpose for the unusual proposal had to do with poor translations, as a “legislator noticed” that some words on the report of a contracted consultancy company (in English) “had translation problems into the official languages [of Macau].”
Please do let me know if you think my opinion is too narrow minded but from the way I see it, where there is a bad translation, my first option would be to fix the translation.
However, considering the issue differently, the AL legislators decided that what is best in this case is to create a new “status” of a third language that has, in fact, been unofficially there all along.
Whether one has lived in Macau for a short or longer period of time, I’m sure that everybody (except maybe aliens) understands already that most ‘intergroup’ communication is done in English, or at least, English assumes “a role of a platform” between speakers of several other languages who cohabitate the MSAR.
This so-called “platform,” contrary to others of the same kind, has really produced an effective result on the communication and understanding among different people and especially between the Chinese and Portuguese communities that, otherwise, would live even further apart than they already do.
What is needed is to politically accept and acknowledge that the English language is important in the Macau SAR, not just because we are geographically and culturally (as some say) near Hong Kong, but for the very same reason that the language is important elsewhere – because it is the “Lingua Franca.”
How about Portuguese? Isn’t this column about “Portuguese” and its ancient and historical connections to Macau? No! It is not! But that doesn’t mean that Portuguese isn’t important or doesn’t have its rightful place in Macau. I believe it does and I believe its importance will be highly recognized (finally) once people stop using as a cliché or some “old family jewel” that is so precious that nobody uses it for several generations.
Speaking of Portuguese, just as I was hearing about this proposal for the English language, I was also pleased to learn that, contrary to what people in general think, Portuguese is well understood by the great majority of our legislators.
I knew already that some could understand and even speak a good number of words and sentences but what I didn’t know is that they all can understand it and very well, because all of them dispense the help of the interpreters/translators of the AL during the periods when legislators or the government address the plenary in Portuguese.
I just hope they can keep practicing (what they also preach) and keep listening to the enquiries and replies in Portuguese, so they won’t take any chances of getting “lost in translation.”