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English as she is spoke
English as she is spoke is the common name of a 19th-century book credited to José da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino , which was intended as a Portuguese-English conversational guide or phrase book , but that is regarded as a classic of unintentional humour.
The humour appears to be a result of dictionary-aided literal translation, which causes idiomatic expressions to be translated inappropriately. For example, the Portuguese phrase chover a cântaros is translated as raining in jars, whereas the idiomatic English translation would be raining cats and dogs.
Modern machine translation systems (such as Babelfish) often have very little knowledge of idiomatic expressions, and can therefore produce results that are as bad as or worse than the translations in English as she is spoke.
Mark Twain said of English as she is spoke:
- "Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect."
Origin
It is widely believed that neither of the authors credited with the work could speak English, and that they used a French-English dictionary to translate an earlier Portuguese-French phrase book O Novo guia da conversação em francês e português, which had been written by José da Fonseca alone. The Portuguese-French phrase book is apparently a competent work, without the defects that characterise English as she is spoke.
More recently, Alexander MacBride of the UCLA Department of Linguistics has suggested that it is more likely that the Portuguese-English book was an unauthorised translation by Pedro Carolino without the involvement of José da Fonseca.
Publication history
- 1853
- In Paris, J.-P. Aillaud, Monlon e Ca published a Portuguese-French phrase book entitled O Novo guia da conversação em francês e português by José da Fonseca. A copy of this book is in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France under the catalogue number FRBNF30446608.
- 1855
- In Paris, J.-P. Aillaud, Monlon e Ca published a Portuguese-English phrase book entitled O Novo Guia da Conversação, em Português e Inglês, em Duas Partes (literally, The new guide to conversation, in Portuguese and English, in two parts), with authorship attributed to José da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino. A copy of this book is in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France under the catalogue number FRBNF30446609.
- 1860s or later
- The title English as she is spoke appears to have been unofficially attached to the book several years after publication.
- 1969
- The book was re-published in New York by Dover Publications, under the title English as she is spoke; the new guide of the conversation in Portuguese and English (ISBN 0486223299).
- 2002
- A new edition edited by Paul Collins was published in under the Collins Library imprint of McSweeny's Books (ISBN 097190474X).
- 2004
- A revised paperback version of the above Collins Library edition was published (ISBN 1932416110).
External links
- Several pages on the Collins Library web site discuss the origins of the book:
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