Josh, I understand your problem. But it is Google's mission to solve it if you want to serve millions of users who need a correct Portuguese version of the translations. What is going on with Google Translate is a complete farce when it comes to the Portuguese language!
You need to sooner or later allow translations into both Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese versions. Main reason - this is a shame for Portugal (and for Google, too!). One that sees a Portugal-origin words spoken by a Brazilian female voice! It's a complete nonsense! How can this website be taken for serious with this huge mistake? Please create as soon as possible both options of Brazil/Portugal for Portuguese translations. Get someone who has born in Portugal to translate all the stuff into proper European Portuguese and you are done! You guys have done so many good things, so why can't you allocate resources for this one. We, Portuguese users in Portugal are overall very unsatisfied with this service, it has even been reported in a national newspaper recently. Since I presume you have never been born either in Brazil or Portugal, I don't believe you can fully understand the the development of the Luso-Brazilian cultural relationships over time. Please allow me to mention that our differences in spelling and pronunciation are far more pronounced than those between the US and British spellings, for example. This is the case even after the 1990 Orthography Agreement that our both countries signed, i.e. there a lot of differences that will remain. As a footnote, I should also say that there are currently in Portugal a ever stronger movement of people (already in the dozens of thousands) lead by prominent academics who reject the adoption of spelling agreement. Symptomatic of this is the fact that each consecutive government in Portugal has delayed the implementation of the agreement. In other words, no one wants to take the credit to implement a stupid agreement that our President has absurdly committed to (although many of us like him!). Basically the reason is no one in Portugal wants to write (and speak) in the way Brazilians do. Putting it simply: that would be the first time in modern history where a former coloniser is colonised by its former colony! Anyway, not to mention the spelling differences, the fact that you are also forcing Portugal users of the website to hear Portuguese words spoken by a Brazilian female voice, is just absolutely ridiculous for us. This is not to say that some animosity has grown up with time, but each of our countries has its own strong identity and cultural pride which needs to be respected. We need it too. Why should Brazil be the only one to be respected? As a final remark, let me say that when European Portuguese does not apply only to Portugal. It also applies to other coutries: East Timor, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, St Tome & Prince, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, and Macau territory in China where people still write the Portuguese of Portugal spelling. Looking forward for Google's determination to implement the only one solution for this problem: our own pt_PT version. best regards Carlos Moreira B.A. (Hons) Humanities (Exeter) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "General" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-translate-general?hl=en.
