Projects  –  Brazilian Portuguese Proofreading Guidelines

Brazilian Portuguese Proofreading Guidelines

Brazilian Portuguese Proofreading Guidelines  –  1

 Projects  –  Brazilian Portuguese Proofreading Guidelines

Introduction
What is the material I will be proofreading?
You will be proofreading translations of short sentences made from Japanese to Brazilian Portuguese. The output
data of this proofreading project will be used for speech data collection (i.e. native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese
will read aloud these sentences).
Why does the material need to be proofread?
The purpose of the proofreading task is to improve readability for native speakers to read out these sentences/
prompts (e.g. make sentences easy to read and understand; avoid hard-to-pronounce words) so that speakers are
less likely to stumble over sentences during recording.

Introduction  –  2
 Projects  –  Brazilian Portuguese Proofreading Guidelines

Rules for Proofreading

When proofreading prompts, please check the following:

Grammar
Grammar and spelling errors (typos, duplicate words) should be corrected.

Example:  Isso é para evitar outros acidente, certo?

==> Isso é para evitar outros acidentes, certo?

Long Sentences
Long sentences (longer than about 30 words) should be shortened so that each sentence won't take longer
than 10 seconds to read aloud.
• Long sentences are indicated in the Excel (working) file under the Tag column –  you will see "long
sentences" tag has been already selected.  You have to remove part of the sentences (by deleting
information from the sentence) to make them shorter.
• You will need to make sure the shortened sentences still sound natural.

Example 1:  Além do câncer pediátrico, doenças de coração crônicas, doenças das vias respiratórias crônicas,
doenças do tecido conjuntivo, doença de rim crônicas, doenças de sangue crônicas, doença imune-mediadas
crônicas, doenças endócrinas, diabetes, deficiências inatas de metabolismo, doenças neurológicas, transtorno
muscular e transtorno digestivo crônico são incluídos.
• You can edit this by deleting the last part of the sentences ("doenças endócrinas, diabetes,
deficiências inatas de metabolismo, doenças neurológicas, transtorno muscular e transtorno
digestivo crônico").
==> Além do câncer pediátrico, doenças de coração crônicas, doenças das vias respiratórias crônicas,
doenças do tecido conjuntivo, doença de rim crônicas, doenças de sangue crônicas, doença imune-
mediadas crônicas são incluidos.
Example 2:  Algumas estações, como Uguisudani, Kaminakazato e Higashijujo, já não têm nenhuma bilheteria
de Midori no Madoguchi depois de terem sido instalados máquinas de venda de bilhetes, assim você precisa ter
cuidado.
• You can delete "depois de terem sido instalados máquinas de venda de bilhetes" to make the
sentence shorter.
==> Algumas estações, como Uguisudani, Kaminakazato e Higashijujo, já não têm nenhuma bilheteria de
Midori no Madoguchi, assim você precisa ter cuidado.

Rules for Proofreading  –  3

 Projects  –  Brazilian Portuguese Proofreading Guidelines

Gender
You need to make sentences gender-neutral/non-gender specific so that it does not assume the speaker's
gender.
For example, words such as “wife”, “husband” and “pregnant” are gender specific, meaning that it is assumed
that gender of the speaker is male and female, respectively.
As prompts will be randomly assigned to native speakers for recording, it would be weird if a male speaker
received the prompt (and asked to read out) "I'm pregnant" and a female speaker received “my wife became
pregnant”.  So these should be 'corrected' to something like "My sister is pregnant" (which can be said by
either female or male speakers).

Prompts will be spoken by native speakers of varying ages/genders/educational backgrounds etc.

Thus, gender-specific content/word needs to be edited so that any person can record any sentences.

Examples 1
• A verdade é que minha esposa está grávida agora.
• Eu tenho 34 anos e estou grávida de 2 meses.
• Isso é útil. Eu sou um estrangeiro e não sou bom em relação a documentos escritos em kanji.
Above sentences contain (speaker) gender specific words, i.e. "esposa", "Eu tenho", "Ela está", "estrangeiro"
and "bom".  These need to be changed something like:
• A verdade é que minha irmã está grávida agora.
• Minha irmã tem 34 anos e Ela está grávida de 2 meses.
• Isso é útil. Eu sou uma pessoa estrangeira que não é boa em relação a documentos escritos em
kanji.

Example 2

Speaker: Japanese | friend Você tem algum irmão ou irmã?

Speaker: foreigner | friend Eu não tenho nenhum irmão, mas o meu marido tem uma irmã mais nova.

Speaker: foreigner | friend Eu sempre quis ter um irmão, então eu fico feliz por ter uma cunhada.

In general sentences such as above can be corrected by changing "marido" to "irmã", "amigo" etc. However,
because of the preceding and following prompts in this scenario, changing "marido" to "amigo" may not work.
Since it is difficult to replace "marido" in the context, you can delete the part of sentence "mas o meu marido
tem uma irmã mais nova" to remove the gender specific part
==> Eu não tenho nenhum irmão.

Rules for Proofreading  –  4

 Projects  –  Brazilian Portuguese Proofreading Guidelines

In some cases, scenario itself is gender specific (e.g. breastfeeding) and so it would be difficult to correct them.
If it is, select " gender_specific_scenario" tag from the drop-down menu in the Tag column.

Foreign Words
• When sentences contain foreign (mostly Japanese) words/expressions and if you can’t guess
what the sentence is about from context in a scenario, we may need to localize such words/
expressions (i.e. modify them so that they make sense in Brazilian Portuguese).
• If you have no idea what the sentence means because of foreign words, select “unknown foreign
words” from the drop-down menu in the Tag column.

Example 1:  Quanto tempo demora de Kyoto até Hakata via Shinkansen
• You are probably able to guess "Hakata" is a place name. 
Example 2:  O que é Ichijyu-sansai?
• “Ichijyu-sansai” is explained in the next prompt within a scenario (i.e. Significa um prato
principal, uma sopa e três acompanhamentos).
Example 3:  Meu gerente me disse que fosse para Midori no Madoguchi comprar bilhetes para a viagem de
negócios.  Onde fica?
• You may be able to guess “Midori no Madoguchi” is the place where you can buy tickets for
travel (e.g. train, bus tickets).
Example 4:  Sim, na JR Hokkaido tem a Kitaka, na JR Tokai tem a TOICA e na JR Kyushu tem a SUGOCA.
• You may be able to guess this prompt is talking about train IC cards from the preceding
prompts in the scenario (e.g. Não, cada companhia no Grupo da JR e ferrovias privados
também têm seus cartões de IC. Tem cartão de IC, da JR Hokkaido também?).

•   However, if you are unable to understand the above sentences even from the contexts in scenarios
because of foreign words/names, please select “unknown foreign words” from the drop-down menu in
the Tag column.
•   If you can guess the meaning and imagine the situation from the contexts, and there is no other
corrections to be made, you can leave the sentence as is and move on to the next sentence.

Since sentences are grouped together by scenario, most of the time you will be able to guess foreign words/
expressions and imagine the situation.

Rules for Proofreading  –  5

 Projects  –  Brazilian Portuguese Proofreading Guidelines

Readability/Naturalness
• If sentences sound awkward or don't make sense in Brazilian Portuguese, make them sound
natural and easy to read them aloud.  You can adjust the words to make sentence sounds natural.
• If the sentence is incomplete, edit to make the most sense.
• In general minimal changes to the original prompts are preferable.

•   Regarding how much you should edit sentences, since these are reading scripts, as long as sentences
are easy for native speakers to read aloud (i.e. speakers are less likely to misread or hesitate) and understand
(i.e. speakers can imagine the situation of the prompt), no need to make changes.
•   We should focus on correcting definitely problematic sentences rather than making all sound perfectly
beautiful. You should NOT spend time to edit the sentences for your own writing preference.

Rules for Proofreading  –  6