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English to Portuguese: "There is no me without you" by Melissa Fay Greene General field: Art/Literary Detailed field: Poetry & Literature
Source text - English (...) The wind sprayed mist through the open door. The whitewashed brick room seemed to dip and sway as if we rode a houseboat whipped by dark waves. The mummified dowager at my side slowly gained ground, as her long cotton shawls began to unwind.
It had taken me a few weeks to get the hang of this. On the long afternoons when the air fattens to water in Addis Ababa, the city’s animal life—goats, sheep, donkeys, stray dogs, woodpeckers, catbirds, swallows—fall asleep standing up in crevices and bowers, or with their heads bowed in the deluge. That is when I long to trudge up the stairs to my room in the tidy Yilma Hotel, peel off my muddy shoes and socks, drink from a liter of bottled water, fall across the bed with Bahru Zewde’s History of Modern Ethiopia, and sleep while the tall, sheer curtains drift into the room full of the scent and weight of rain.
But I was stuffed into a love seat in Haregewoin’s common room and there was no getting out of it. The group inertia overwhelmed me. “Now?” everyone stirred and asked in bewilderment. “You want to go somewhere now, in this weather?” Some were thinking, I’m sure, “The ferange [white] has to go somewhere now?” My friend and driver, Selamneh Techane (Se-lam-nuh Te-tchen-ay), who was rolled forward with his head resting on his hands, sat up and looked at me with bleary confusion. Every time I tried to stand up, the mater familias beside me sloughed off another layer of shawls. (...)
Translation - Portuguese (...) O vento borrifava névoa pela porta aberta. A sala de tijolos caiados parecia mergulhar e balançar como se navegássemos em um barco a ser chicoteado por ondas negras. A nobre senhora mumificada ao meu lado foi aos poucos se revelando à medida que seus longos xales de algodão começavam a se desenrolar.
Foram algumas semanas até que eu me acostumasse. Nas longas tardes quando o ar fica pesado e chove em Adis Abeba, a vida animal da cidade – cabras, ovelhas, burros, cachorros de rua, pica-paus, tordos, andorinhas – adormece de pé em fendas e pérgulas ou com suas cabeças encurvadas no dilúvio. É aí que anseio arrastar-me escada acima até meu quarto no pequeno Hotel Yilma, arrancar os sapatos e meias cheios de lama, beber um litro d’água, cair na cama com a História Moderna da Etiópia de Bahru Zewde e dormir enquanto as longas cortinas transparentes esvoaçam no quarto tomado pelo cheiro e o peso da chuva.
Mas eu estava presa em um pequeno sofá na sala de Haregewoin e não havia jeito de sair dali. A inércia do grupo me dominou. “Agora?” todos se viraram e perguntaram perplexos. “Queres sair agora, nesse tempo?” Com certeza alguns deviam estar pensando “A farange (branca) tem que ir a algum lugar agora?” Meu amigo e motorista Selamneh Techane, que sentava curvado apoiando a cabeça em suas mãos, ajeitou-se na cadeira e me olhou com um ar confuso. Toda vez que eu tentava me levantar, a matrona ao meu lado largava outra camada de xale. (...)
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Bachelor's degree - Universidade Federal de Pelotas
Experience
Years of experience: 16. Registered at ProZ.com: Mar 2012.
My name is Renan Castro Ferreira and I'm from Pelotas, Brazil. I hold a degree in English language (TEFL) and English-language literatures and a Master's degree in Linguistics, both from Universidade Federal de Pelotas.
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