Lost in Translation: English in Brazil

One of the main challenges leading up to Brazil's mega-events--including the Rio+20, the World Cup, and the Olympics--is a shortage of English speakers in key sectors, including tourism, transportation, and hospitality. For those who spend lots of time in Brazil and speak Portuguese or hope to become fluent, this is actually an advantage, which can allow for more immersion. But for one-time visitors or those dependent on English as their only language or the only other way to communicate outside of their native language (such as Chinese, Russian, etc), it can prove to be a problem.

On global English rankings, Brazil does not fare well. EF, a global English education company, released its international English proficiency index for 2011, showing that Brazil ranked as a country with "low English proficiency." Though it was among the lowest ranking countries, Brazil scored above the "very low proficiency" countries such as Panama and Vietnam. Released in April, the GlobalEnglish Corporation Business English Index ranked Brazil among the lowest in the world among countries with the least amount of English fluency in the workplace, which puts the country "at a disadvantage." An Economist Intelligence Unit report released this month indicated that Brazil is one of the countries that struggles the most with the language barrier in international business; nearly three-quarters of Brazilians surveyed said their company had experienced “financial losses as a result of failed cross-border transactions.”

Brazilian surveys reflect this issue, showing low levels of English knowledge at all levels of the socioeconomic spectrum. A Catho survey from late last year found that only 11 percent of Brazilian job candidates could communicate well in English, and only 3.4 percent of all candidates could speak fluent English. A 2009 Catho study found that 24 percent of Brazilian professionals speak fluent English, and that only 8 percent of Brazilian executives speak fluent English. A lack of English speakers even in high-tech fields has hurt Brazil's competitiveness in IT and outsourcing like call centers. According to a Data Popular survey released this month, the "new middle class" in Brazil will spend R$28.1 billion (US $13.8 billion) on education in 2012, but only 1 in 5 members of the so-called C class knows how to speak a foreign language.

Travel writer and fellow Brazilophile Seth Kugel has written about this issue, finding a mixed bag. In March, he wrote about the puzzingly poor translation of Embratur (Brazil's tourism bureau)'s English site, particularly the interactive World Cup section. Some errors were particularly egregious since they simply required a Google or Wikipedia search rather than a translated phrase. At the end of the post, Kugel wrote:

"Obviously, no one is going to decide not to visit Trancoso because of a vocabulary error. But give up visiting a country that doesn't have legible information on its official website? With so many other countries with their eye on the billions of dollars from international tourists? It's not only possible, it's probable."

In response, Embratur said it had hired a third-party company, Agencia Click, to do the site and translation, and that it would release the site with a new translation later this year. The whole thing was quite strange, considering that the agency in question, which is one of the largest and well-respected digital communications companies in the country, should have no problem finding real translators. But it's a symptomatic case in a country where things are often and sometimes unnecessarily lost in translation.

On the other hand, the upcoming mega-events have added pressure to the tourism sector to hire more English speakers. In a recent "review" of São Paulo's Guarulhos Airport, Kugel found that three different information booth workers were able to communicate in English, providing helpful information about hotels and sightseeing. (However, special groups run by judges aimed to solve issues like lost baggage and overbookings at Brazil's biggest airports have only a single English-speaking employee, a recent report said.) Language schools estimate that foreign language courses will grow by 30 to 40 percent over the next four years in preparations for the World Cup and Olympics. Last year, around 120 taxi drivers in Rio received English training in a special course for taxistas--the first of its kind in the country--which inspired similar taxi driver courses from Piauí to Rio Grande do Sul.

My experience is that there are plenty of English speakers in Brazil, but these speakers are sometimes concentrated in specialized fields like finance and web companies. But for me, Brazil's real challenge isn't just going to be finding and training English speakers in key jobs before the mega-events, but rather improving foreign language education at the elementary and secondary school levels so that the next generation has better opportunities in the global economy.

Photo: by me. Florianópolis International Airport, 2008.

Comments

[Sérgio]

Interesting links you've posted there. I had no idea how much little English us Brazilians knew. If I had to guess I'd have said around 10%. I'd never expect the figures to be as low as 3%!

And I do hope foreign languages (at least English or Spanish) are improved at the elementary and secondary school. I went to a private school and the English classes were horrible. Since I had taken English private course since I was 6yo, everyone wanted me when there were group activities.

Thank you!

[Eneida]

Excellent article,Rachel. Excellent, as usual.

[Shay]

Why do they not open up more works visas for native English speakers to come there and teach? Would it really take away a job for a Brazilian? In the end, a native speaker will always trump a non-native, it's just natural. Now of course I am providing that the teacher is of good quality and knows how to teach that is.

I just think if this doesn't happen, then they are really going to hurt themselves for the big events. I would LOVE to come there and teach English, I teach it here at home already to immigrants but I will not come there and do it illegally like most do.

[A Facebook User]

There's another underlying issue in this: these companies don't value the bi/tri/multilingual employees as they should.

Salaries on this tourism/entertainment area are still way too low, so it doesn't attract those who have the real skills needed, and Brazil doesn't have a "tipped employees" culture per se so that they could "complement" these low wages.

Let me give you my real world example: I do speak English (fluent), Portuguese (doh, native) and Spanish (intermediate, after all, I spent half of my past 3 years in Miami). I understand French and Italian as well. But I prefer to work from home (home-office) for two companies (a Brazilian one earning around R$ 3k/month for full-time, and a US one earning US$ 1k/month for part-time) as well as running my own small business (I sold most of it last year, that used to bring me liquid another R$ 2k a month but also had too many defaults, so I sold 90% of it).

I am highly specialized on what I do, and the brazilian corporations don't like that. They prefer to hire cheap barely-knowledged people and train them internally so that they can be their own "specialized monkeys". Unless you come from this background, scaling in the corporate ladder (and enter the circle and go around other companies after these credentials are gained) you are not allowed in (a.k.a. the "panelinha").
Thus, my reasonable demands for like a R$ 5k/month salary are easily laughed out (as "I don't have the credentials they want", although with what I do and know I could easily get R$ 10k or more monthly compared to other professionals in the area).

That is in my specialized field area (web infrastructure). Now imagine on the tourist industry, where wages are usually minimum wage to R$ 1000? And this having to be on iced schedules, running around and heavily working out, having to take public transportation and facing 2-3h of traffic jams each way, versus my R$ 3-5k/month to work from home from my bed/couch. There are simply no attractives.

[Steve]

I've been a working PR writer and trade journalist for more than 10 years. I speak Portuguese highly fluently (25+ years), read well, and write fairly well. I spent almost two years in 2009 and 2010 trying to build business writing and translating Brazilian web sites into English, and write English copy for Brazilian business. What I found is that Brazilian companies are looking to get their English on the cheap. They are OK with substandard (i.e. bad) copy because there are price points they're not willing to exceed. I found more work and better paying work, editing Chinese web sites already written in English, and putting them into better English, (I don't speak Chinese).

I have friends in Brazil with strong, thriving translation businesses, who say the future is only in interpretation and that translation and writing in English is still dropping in price, even with Olympic and Copa demand. Brazilian companies need to produce English copy to compete, but from what I've seen, quality is not a concern to most Brazilian business. You can look at huge companies like Petrobras for example who have deep pockets and could easily pay to have quality materials written / translated and tell that their English materials are written by a very excellent Brazilian speaker of English, but not by a native speaker.

http://www.petrobras.com/en/products/

I just checked out the tourism portal and it looks like they've given it an update. I had seen it previously though.

[Shay]

Excellent points everyone!

You have hit the nail on the head. Until companies and Brazil as a whole VALUE good quality English standards and translations, there isn't much hope of improvement.

The entire system and perspectives need to be re-vamped to appreciate quality English teachers and not be satisfied with sub par work.

[Maristela Demarco]

Brilliant and sadly realistic article.

[Winnie]

And for all those who failed high school physics, I think this hotel is very kind to accommodate us.

"The Seamar Hotel makes use of 34 apartments, being twenty of them with sight for the sea, equipped with TV 20"with canal for signature, air-conditional, to frigobar, telephone with direct, safe-individual dialing (servisafe) and digital radio-clock. We still have apartments with adaptations for deficient physicists."

http://www.seamarhotel.com.br/Hospedagemingles.htm

[Rio Gringa]

I actually did almost fail high school physics and may go to Fortaleza later this year. Definitely for me! :)

[Mario Brazo]

Sou Brasileiro , se eu for para os Estados Unidos irei sabendo Inglês , se qualquer pessoa de outro país quiser conhecer o meu país tal pessoa que aprenda a falar Português , simples assim.