Drop the mic!

The Portuguese people like to talk! Seriously. I can’t explain very well why… They appreciate it and, therefore, they speak too much. Honestly. Sometimes they – we! -, don’t even add anything but continue saying the same thing in other words. We love to say whatever. That’s a fact. A real one.

Personally, I only realized that I used too many words to express myself when I was a journalist, in another life. Then I learned to be short, clear, and concise, and I started to notice that others weren’t.

There is another funny characteristic in Portugal: I think we repeat ourselves often, as if considering that it is necessary to reinforce an idea to consolidate what we want to say. We repeat the same idea with different words trying to make sure the listener understands what we speak. See?

On the other hand, the Portuguese language is very rich, being based on Latin but having influences from other languages, and growing by herself.

We are a country of literates.

In fact, it is a common expression to say that Portugal is a country of poets. Every year I think we get more excited about whether we’re going to have a Nobel Prize in literature than a Peace Nobel…

In short: we like talking and writing. Too much. The more the merrier. We like too much, and we write and speak too much.

Because of all of this, or for none of these reasons, the truth is that the Portuguese need more words to say the same thing as in other languages. Or perhaps other languages need fewer words to express themselves.

The fact is that the Portuguese language requires you to use more words, and longer ones, to say the same thing as, for example, in English and Spanish.

If, in the first place, there would be no problem with that – hey, you have to exercise your vocal cords! -, the situation can become a little strange when you have to do a voice-over in Portuguese for an already finished video that is originally in Spanish or English. The video was created thinking about the timing of the script in these languages, shorter than the text in Portuguese…

Now here’s the problem! If, as a Portuguese person, I need more words, and longer ones, I have to do the voice-over faster to be able to fit the text into the video!

It’s a headache, very often!

Sometimes you need to talk a lot but really quickly! Abnormally fast! And the client asks you to sound natural… These are pieces of the puzzle that don’t fit together, even if we force them to.

For example, “hoje é um dia de sol” is “today is a sunny day”. Six words in Portuguese, five in English. Now imagine a text in which we need one more word per sentence…

Headache.

Another example: a short text to promote an event came to me with 234 words in English, in the original version, and 250 in Portuguese. There were 63 more characters. It seems like a small difference but, in a video as short and synchronized as it was, having 16 more words made all the difference!

Run, Marcos! Run! Or, as I would say in Portuguese: “Corre, Marcos! Corre!”

(Four more characters… Told you…)

I hope that multinational companies will realize that there are great video production companies in Portugal, and very good Portuguese copywriters, and that they will start making their original international videos with Portuguese professionals, including voice artists. Thus, the writing of the scripts will be tailored to the Portuguese language, and the texts will then be translated into other languages.

It’s time to listen to voice talents from other countries getting their timing right with longer videos!

Instead of me speeding up the speech, others will have to… speak… ve…ry… slow… ly… to… stay… syn…ced.

Right. I have nothing more to say today.

As we also say a lot here in Portugal, “the one who spoke is no longer here”.