I have Doubts.

The topic of Direct Translations is actually a couple years in the making and one that I find especially interesting and entertaining since I’m back to being a student of language. The most notable experience being with the title phrase when I first worked with the Brazilian team a couple years ago after first joining SAP. At this time, my team and I were working on a customer/partner event series with the local teams to create a big show for small to medium businesses in those markets. As with any event planning there were a lot of detailed conference calls in preparation. On these calls, my team and I were frequently thrown for a major loop. We would have what would seem like a productive conference call. Then, after thinking that we had all our actions and priorities aligned and with minutes left on the call, the loaded statement would come. One of our Brazilian colleagues would say, "So, I have DOUBTS". Um, okay. Doubts? (Insert a confused exhale here). You, have Doubts? You.... don't believe us? Huh. Should we go through the list again? Was it something specific we said?

It wasn’t until moving to Brazil that I truly learned the real issue. One of the common words in Portuguese for a question is uma dúvida. Directly translated into English its a doubt. Technically, this is correct and easily understood. However, the subtlety of implication behind the word Doubt for English speakers is completely different than a question and used for much more serious consideration than asking a question…

A couple other examples of these great direct translations that make my day entertaining:

My colleagues always tell me they would like to "present me" to people, when they would like to introduce me to someone new. Of course, I understand what they mean, but this choice of word in English always conjures up images of me being presented in a much more elaborate sense. Should I prepare a song and dance? Do I need to take a bow with florish?

And the best one that never ceases to make me laugh, is the topic of "Customer Intimacy". Now in English, this word has such a strong sexual connotation that having this "Intimidade com o cliente" or so called intimacy with our customers seems a bit shocking and inappropriate. But the word intimate in Portuguese (also Spanish incidentally), simply means to be very close and does not carry the implied sexual meaning that our north American culture has assigned the word, through using it as an politically correct euphemism for sex. So it always cracks me up immensely to hear our President of Latin America talk on this topic. :)