Talk:History of the state of São Paulo

Conditional tense and other translator notes

This is used in Romance languages to indicate that the narrator is quoting someone, and is neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the statement. Noting this since the article is on the copy edit list and I am not certain I will finish it Elinruby (talk) 06:08, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Other translator notes:

• Bacharel de Cananeia is piped to a word that means exile. Though he was an exile, this is unclear and as best I can tell inaccurate. Requires research Elinruby (talk) 06:22, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

• ”Courtesan”, previously flagged by someone else, is in fact completely wrong. The Portuguese version says “Cortesão”, the name of the historian mentioned in the previous sentence. Translated proper names are a huge red flag for machine translation, but this would be particularly bad machine translation since a literal translation would be “courtier”. This article should be very carefully checked and needs a lot more than a copy edit, although that would be a good start as long as care is taken not to introduce inaccuracies

• needs a rewrite for organization, at least in the Colonization section, which is definitely fragmented. On first pass however, I am concentrating on wikilinks, readability and definition needed flags.

• i may have considerably improved that section, which is not to assert that it could not be betterElinruby (talk) 19:09, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

• Enrique Montez: article on pt. Wikipedia does not seem to agree that he was hanged as described here. Need to examine Portuguese version of this article

• As with all word-for-word translations from Romance languages, adjectives can appear after their associated nouns, and use of “the” may be inappropriate, as in “the World War 2”. Euphemism and an emphasis on nouns rather than verbs is prevalent in academic writing. I am fixing a lot of this as I go, but it’s becoming clear that it will take more than one editing marathon to fix this article. Something else to watch for, common to Romance languages, is narration in the present tense when something more rococo like the past pluperfect or subjunctive might strictly speaking be more correct. This use of present tense always gets missed in machine translation and literally translated, but does not mean the action is taking place now.

• I have not looked at references at all yet. Elinruby (talk) 07:50, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Have done some major surgery and article still needs work. Currently on a second pass. It’s definitely word for word machine translation, and pretty much exactly corresponds to the Portuguese article in all its chauvinism. References are sketchy; mostly in Portuguese, and not all that academic to begin with. But later for that. Found one dead link so far. More notes:

• all that stuff about defensive and arrest flags: should be flag-bearer if anything. I think local militias became slave raiders? The word translated here as “arrest” also means “seizure”. And slaves are mentioned. As today’s project I will try to get to the bottom of this
• ”Garschagen 1998” is cited 16 times, but I can’t tell from either the English or the Portuguese what that is exactly. Not in bibliography, which is usually what’s up with mystery references like this. Leaving for the moment because the little I am finding on google indicates it may be an on-topic reference. Maybe google scholar will help. Elinruby (talk)

Questioned text

“From the early days of colonization, attacks were constant, in a defensive bandeirismo that aimed to guarantee the "São Paulo expansion" of the 17th century. “

Definition supplied elsewhere. Otherwise contains no actual information and yet conveys approval of slave raids. Section still needs work Elinruby (talk) 23:44, 15 October 2021 (UTC)