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Portuguese to English: Formic Jazz General field: Art/Literary Detailed field: Poetry & Literature
Source text - Portuguese Com a condensação elevando meus pensamentos à uma camada superior do neocortex, encaro meus óculos em cima da mesinha enquanto, ao mesmo tempo, envio fundos para a universidade. Já nem preciso olhar pra tela, meu cérebro decorou todo o caminho visual do site de arquitetura rudimentar. Se tenho dinheiro de sobra, por que não financiar projetos promissores (meus próprios)?! Além do mais, ninguém estaria disposto a pagar um centavo pelo incentivo aos meus estudos crackpots, não nesses tempos. Mas por excesso, me refiro aos 800 dólares que faço, em média, numa noite trabalhando nos chats adultos online.
"Nicolle, entre agora! Última chance antes que eu cancele sua permissão ao sistema de controle da sonda."
Pego meus óculos em mãos. Sempre borrados e sujos. Os odeio com veemência; assim como odeio o crescimento desenfreado do meu lobo frontal que resultou na miopia pelo squeezing of my optical nerve. Sem um sistema associativo complexo, talvez eu pudesse viver em poverty como todos os outros, o que de certa forma já faço, mas ignorância é uma benção e dela eu não usufruo. Conhecimento é um dos caminhos para iluminação, mas é tão doloroso que quase não vale a pena.
Sou incompleta, me sinto como se o Buraco tivesse sugado mais de mim do que apenas meu cabelo e melhor amigo. Me sinto a pessoa mais inteligentemente burra num quarto cheio de... fuck it. As estrelas, hoje, são mais som do que luz, uma vez que a recusa de usar um óculos para aprecia-las me fez desenvolver um senso de audição imaginário; onde estrelas cantam lindamente enquanto brilham de forma horrorosa.
Fazem mais de dez anos, e se ele pôde dobrar de tamanho em alguns dias, sabe-se lá seu tamanho atual. I fear and expect the day in which one of my blissful orgasmic seizures and visions will become real and the Hole appear as the eye of the storm, sucking this whole city into oblivion. What I fear the most, though, is that to happen again, and, this time, I'd be the only one in a city of inexistent corpses. A lost soul to wander amongst ghosts.
Quando os estimulantes dão o primeiro hit, gotículas de suor começam a formar do coro cabeludo às costas do pescoço e testa. Já não sinto o calor, não como antes. Indiferente ao forno que me cerca, minha consciência condensa, dissolve-se borbulhante como um comprimido efervescente num copo de água. Não party high, mas ultra focused for work high.
Uma formiga caminha pela parede granulada em frente aos meus olhos. Suas patinhas rápidas parecem ter dificuldade, pois ela demora antes de desaparecer na curva da porta. Provavelmente procurando pele meu açucar, já no final. É difícil de imaginar sua perspectiva desse quarto: enorme como uma cidade, ainda maior se ela possuir asas.
Tento formular a introdução do meu treatise entitled, por agora, Neo-Transcendentalism. Sinto a barba grisalha do meu avô correndo pela minha bochecha. Ouço a canção de ninar que minha avó costumava cantar para mim. Lembro de gostar de estapear o rosto do meu avô com minhas mãozinhas, também lembro bem como mordia o queixo da minha avó quando minha gengivas coçavam com o dentes de leite forçando sua saída.
Numa civilização de formigas, espaço e sua delimitação não seriam problema, pois num quarto humano de quatro paredes, teto e chão, elas teriam seis vezes mais nosso espaço de locomoção. Overpopulation seria um assunto nunca contemplado. Leis fundamentais da ciência teriam uma forma completamente alien, talvez sequer existiriam. Uma vez que seu sistema seria de extremo coletivismo, socialismo seria a norma natural; a rainha seria o centro de integração, como um supercomputador quântico.
Um barulhinho nervoso apita junto a uma figurinha no canto da tela. Large scale nanotube production reserach como parte do título. Nada mal. Hora de enviar o pagamento, como prometido.
Um click.
"Done with the paypal. Good job with the graphs."
Enquanto, em caligrafia horrenda, minha outra mão continua:
O ser humano age com princípios passivos e ativos, onde seu poder criativo ou força transformadora assumem qualquer forma necessária, traduzindo-se em, ou mesmo desenvolvendo, um meio da época quando sob influência de adversidade. Esse foi o nascimento da arte, religião e mesmo pensamento científico.
Minha fórmula da produtividade não é uma de criatividade, essa é a responsabilidade do meu sistema anormalmente mielinizado. Os estimulantes inibem o perfeccionismo e sacudem a motivação, o que me permite escrever sem pensar duas vezes. O resultado: escrevo bem mais. O efeito colateral: 80% do que escrevo é baboseira nonsense, como esses dois últimos parágrafos que com certeza irão para a lixeira.
A caneta implode. Oração violenta, hipérbole da situação — o tubo apenas não aguentou, devo ter posto muita força na sucção. O ronco do meu estômago é engraçado, sinto como se estivesse ganhando alguma coisa por quase não comer ultimamente.
Toda minha cavidade peitoral, exposta pela camiseta velha, assim como minhas mãos, encontram-se cobertas de tinta azul; from Taiwan, acho.
O acidente, o susto, se deu pelo mesmo motivo de sempre. O mesmo barulho de sempre. Dessa vez mais alto e violento como um aspirador de pó de proporções planetárias.
A formiguinha continua a andar pela parede. Agora azul, oblivious to what just happened to it.
Na porta, mais uma vez para checar os arredores, mais uma vez para me livrar do medo infantil que, mesmo no calor, faz meu corpo tremer por inteiro.
Mesmo movimento, dessa vez mais rápido. Nada. Nenhum buraco além dos usuais furinhos na parede. Silêncio ensurdecedor nos arredores do prédio em contraste com os gritos e vozes fervorosas na distância, todos em meio à seus calorosos discursos.
Agora posso ouvir. É, são os estimulantes. Eles fazem meu corpo pular de um momento a outro, como naquele filme...
Só meu objeto de foco inicial importa, o resto can be skipped.
E agora, com os pés descalços do lado de fora novamente, me pego de surpresa numa miríade ofuscante de novas sensações — e a dúvida de quando e como saí do apartamento.
All my working memory focus on the original task, that is, normally. Agora estou fragmentada. Meu sistema nervoso central ficou preso no treatise enquanto meus sentidos viajam quase que independentemente do meu controle.
Pássaros noturnos cantam baixinho nas proximidades.
Mais cachorros latem, distantes, antes inaudíveis.
Meu celular toca enquanto minhas pernas caminham, sem minha permissão, pelo corredor. É meu pai., não sei se devo atender. Aqui na área de lavanderia comunitária os sons e visão do tal espetáculo misterioso são perfeitos.
Translation - English With the condensation elevating my thoughts to a superior neocortical layer, I stare at my glasses above the little table, while, at the same time, send funds to the university. Cringefest of pleonasms apart, God I hate this word, I don’t even need to look at the screen anymore; my brain rooted the visual path of the website of rudimentary architecture, if I may say. If money is spare, why not fund promising projects (my own)?! Besides, nobody has the disposition to pay a cent as an incentive for my crackpot studies, not in these times. No, I lie, nobody has any money for anything. But by spare, I refer to the 800 dollars that I make, on average, working a night on these adult online chats.
“Nicolle, come now! Last chance before you lose all permissions to your beloved little probe. DO NOT test me again.”
I pick up the glasses, always so blurry and dirty, which I vehemently hate; just like I hated the rampant growth of my frontal lobe that resulted in the squeeze of my optical nerve. Without a complex associative system, maybe I could’ve lived in poverty like everyone else, what I, in some way, am already doing, but ignorance is a blessing and of it I don’t usufruct. ‘Knowledge’ is one of the paths to illumination, yet so painful that may not be worth it. And the headache continues still.
I’m incomplete, I feel as if the Hole sucked more of me than just my hair and best friend. I feel like I’m the most intelligently dumb person in a room full of... fuck it. The stars, today, are more noise than light, once my refuse to use this pair of glasses to appreciate them made me develop an imaginary sense of sound; where stars sing beautifully while glowing in horrendous ways.
It makes well over ten years, and if it could double its size in a couple of days, who knows its current size. I fear and expect the day in which one of my blissful orgasmic seizures and visions will become real as the Hole appears as the eye of the storm, sucking this whole city into oblivion as a strange attractor, a butterfly effect of my guilt. What I fear the most, though, is that to happen again, and, this time, I'd be the only one in a city of inexistent corpses – a world, even. A lost soul to wander amongst ghosts, a ghost to wander amongst corpses. Think, think, think.
When the stimulants hit, droplets of sweat start to form from my scalp to the back of my neck and forehead. I no longer feel the atmospheric hotness, not as before. Indifferent to the surrounding oven, my consciousness condenses, dissolving bubbly as an effervescent pill on cold water – pushing the ego to thrust against the sea of possibilities of the re-wiring. Not party high, but ultra-focused for work high.
An ant walks over the granular wall in front of my eyes. Its little fast legs seemingly in difficulty, since it lags to disappear at the door’s curve. Probably in a mission to take my sugar supply, already at its end. It’s hard to imagine its perspective of this room: as enormous as a city, even bigger and alien if she possesses wings.
*It, not she.
I try to formulate the introduction to my treatise entitled, for now, Non-human Neo-transcendentalism. I feel the grizzled beard of my grandfather run over my cheek. I hear the lullaby my grandmother used to sing for me. I remember liking to smack the face of my family elders with my little soft hands, as well as I... remember how I used to bite my mother’s chin when my gums itched with the forced outing of teeth? ...But I must focus on my papers.
In an ant-based civilization, space and its delimitations wouldn’t be a problem, since in a four-wall human room, with ground and ceiling, they would have, just for walking space, six times of that we have for locomotion. Overpopulation would hardly be a problem, maybe a never to be contemplated topic. Fundamental laws of science would have completely different forms, alien assumptions would be made in philosophy, their metaphysics leading to something other than physics and mathematics; or, at least, a non-euclidean based foundation. And, once their system would be one of extreme collectivism, socialism would be the natural norm, with the queen as integration center, a supercomputer for the rest of normal workers, the law, an absolute support. Wouldn’t that just be fascism, though?
A nervous noise bleeps along a tiny window on the screen: ‘Large-scale nanotube production research’ as part of the title. Not bad. Time to deliver the payment, as promised.
A click and "Done with the PayPal. Good job with the graphs." While in heinous calligraphy, my other hand continues: The human being acts on active and passive principles, where its creative power or transformative force assume any necessary form, translating itself in, or even developing, a medium for the epoch when under influence of adversities. This was the birthing of art, religion and even scientific thinking. This is pure gibberish.
My productivity formula isn’t one of creativity, this being the responsibility of an abnormally myelinated system. The stimulants inhibit my crippling perfectionism and enhance motivation, what gives me the freedom not to need to think twice. The result: I write more, I do more. The collateral effect: 80% of what I write is nonsense bullshit, as this two last paragraphs that are certainly going to the trash can, as well as, the shitty correlations I’m making between ants, humans, and xenomorphs – the xenomorph as a human becoming ant; Kafkian to say the least. Nonsensical, not nonsense. Ugh. The pen implodes. A violent clause, hyperbole of the situation – the tube had problems to accept the torque, too much suction force. Funny stomach grunts accompanied by a sensation of emptiness, an anti-hunger that makes it feels like a winning, strange joy in deprivation and loss, all resonating in the room.
Nicolle’s become but a symbol in a bigger set of representations and relations: A whole pectoral cavity exposed by an old shirt, as well as feminine hands covered in a made-in-Taiwan cheap blue ink from a yet cheaper pen’s implosion. The accident, the scare, but causations motivated by difference in repetition. When the same noise of always – the one that became familiar -, this time louder and more abrasive, like a vacuum cleaner of planetary proportions, intrudes. Still, the little ant continues to walk over the wall, now blue, remaining oblivious to what just happened to it – unscathed by self-aware experience, unprepared for rational interpretation of the oozing sound.
Swiftly to the door, one more time to check the surroundings, one more time to free the childish fear that, even in the heat, makes the whole body tremble. The same movement to open the door but faster this time. Nothing. No hole beyond the usual little ones in the wall. Deafening silence loops around the buildings contrasting many feverish voices and screams in the distance, each declaring an ardently mad un-dialectic discourse.
Now it can be heard. Yes, stimulant’s effect. They make the body jump from moment to another, like in that movie… Only the object of initial focus matters, the rest can be skipped and ignored. But this is what happens when the initial focus is disturbed.
And now, bare feet outside again, surprised in an obfuscating myriad of new sensations – and the doubt of when and how moved out of the apartment – meet an interpolation of noises.
All the working memory focus on the original task, that is, normally. Now all fragmented. An imprisoned central neural system, trapped into the randomly painted blue treatise while the sense travels almost independently and out of control, searching for a new focal point.
Nocturnal birds faintly sing in the proximities.
More dogs join the barking, distant. Inaudible some seconds ago.
The cell phone rings, it says ‘’Father’’, as the legs walk - without permission - by the corridor till the community’s open utility room, where the sounds and vision of said mysterious spectacle are perfect, and some things could be spotted if myopia wasn’t the barrier.
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Experience
Years of experience: 8. Registered at ProZ.com: Jul 2018.
Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop, AutoCAD, Dreamweaver, Google Translator Toolkit, Indesign, MateCat, memoQ, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office Pro, Microsoft Word, Passolo, Plunet BusinessManager, Powerpoint, ProZ.com Translation Center, Smartling, Trados Studio
CV/Resume
CV available upon request
Bio
Independent translator and editor with a focus on Portuguese (general) and English (general), possessing some knowledge of CAT Tools, especially SDL TRADOS and Adobe InDesign for page design. Areas of specialization include general science with a heavy physics leaning (material and theoretical mathematical tools), continental philosophy, applied ontology (experimental metaphysics), literature and the arts.
Young science researcher scholarship with projects in instrumental physics developing powerful new experimental magnetic coils, physics of high energy and mathematical models for experimental physics and theoretical engineering.
Self-employed freelancer operating from Barbalha, Ceará (Brazil) and Fortaleza, Ceará (Brazil) on the following: Managed, advertised and created required flexible content for many different online services (including some experience with search optimization, general design, and Information Architecture), also including logo, graphic and web design (basic JAVA, HTML, PHP, CSS, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Dreamweaver, Fruit Loops, Audacity, Filmora, SonyVegas, SketchUp, Scrivener, rudimentary CAD sub-applications among other less usual, more specific “improvisational” software).
Experience in data analysis, crowdsourcing, internet assessing, evaluation and talent search for enterprises such as Lionbridge and Wonder.
General ghostwriter (fiction and non-fiction alike) and think-tank researcher (Wonder employee and freelance analyst) in three different languages (Portuguese, English, Spanish).
Short-story writer and poet with some publications (English, Portuguese).
Legal business partner and personnel manager of a small construction company named JAO at Barbalha, Ceará (2015--2017).
Expertise