Nepenthe

    Miguel Esteves Cardoso para o Público : O penteador de gatos de Istambul Faça-me o favor de ver o vídeo de meio minuto em que um velho engraxador de Istambul escova um gato de rua , coisa que faz todos os dias, e sempre à mesma hora. Agora imagine que não leu o parágrafo anterior e que encontrou o vídeo por acaso, quando estava à procura de escovas turcas. Ou, melhor ainda, esqueça o vídeo e imagine que está em Istambul, virou uma esquina, e deu com o engraxador a pentear um gato . Não tem maneira de o filmar. Volta para o hotel e recebe uma chamada de Portugal. Como descreve o que viu? Ou então manda o vídeo a uma amiga que não tem rede e que não tem maneira de o ver. Como descreve o que viu? Deve haver muitos outros pais que fazem isto com os filhos. Antes de olhar para um vídeo que nos querem mostrar, pedimos que nos diga em palavras o que é que o vídeo mostra, para que usem a língua portuguesa para nos dizer o que eles viram naquele vídeo. Dizem-nos que ler e escrever ...

Image from Impala AI homepage.    From Scrolla AllAfrica : AI is helping nurses in Malawi spot danger before sick babies and children become critically ill. Malawi has adopted IMPALA, an AI-powered patient monitoring system used in children’s wards. The system uses machine learning to predict when a patient’s condition may get worse up to three hours before it becomes critical. It can also send alerts before a child’s health drops badly, Connecting Africa reported. IMPALA was developed by GOAL 3, a Dutch social enterprise working in health technology. It is being used at Mangochi Hospital, Malamulo Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, among others. During 2023/2024, two hospitals using IMPALA recorded between 40% and 51% fewer deaths than in 2022/2023, before the system was introduced. Blessings Juma, head of the children’s ward at Mangochi District Hospital, told El Pais that before IMPALA, the hospital could record four deaths in a week to 15 days. Now...

  We had this on sale here.                         From The New Yorker : A few months ago, while watching Instagram stories, I came across a provocative advertisement. A man with scruffy brown hair said, “What if I told you alcohol is not actually bad for you?” He explained that our livers convert alcohol into acetaldehyde, a toxic molecule that he described as a main cause of hangovers. His brief chemistry lesson, which used glass beakers filled with colorful liquids as props, was accompanied by a link to a product: a supplement that promised to neutralize acetaldehyde more quickly than my body could on its own. Eliminating acetaldehyde, the ad claimed, would help conquer hangovers. One reviewer of the supplement said that she’d drunk more than five glasses of wine and felt fine the next day. I usually have a strong aversion to the science-y veneer of supplement marketing, yet I stuck with the ad to the end...

1927 Paramount Studio map  of potential filming locations in California that best depict regions across the globe. Found on Reddit .  

O DAD 2 demorou a chegar às bancas, coitado, mas aqui está para mais barrigadas de riso. Isto de ser pai sozinho não é para meninos! Traduit par moi-même. Sinopse da editora ZERO A OITO : «A vida continua para esta… família invulgar! Pandora (a mais velha) está ocupada a estudar para os exames, a adolescente Ondine tem um encontro, a pequena Roxane está a jogar um vídeojogo e a Bebérenice tem fome… e o Dad só gostava de ter uns minutos de paz! Ele pode estar desempregado, mas criar as suas quatro filhas sozinho é um trabalho a tempo inteiro sem direito a pausas!»  

Speakr's blog .   The Portuguese have "saudade" — a bittersweet longing for something absent, possibly forever. Not nostalgia, not homesickness, not grief — something in between that English simply cannot name. The Danes have "hygge" — a feeling of cozy contentment that "cozy" doesn't begin to capture. The Japanese have "wabi-sabi" — finding beauty in imperfection and impermanence. The Germans have "Kummerspeck" — literally "grief bacon," the weight you gain from emotional overeating. And Easter Islanders have "tingo" — the act of borrowing things from a friend's house, one by one, until there's nothing left. Every language contains words that exist nowhere else — emotional concepts so culturally specific that translation requires not a word, but a paragraph. 🧩❤️ This isn't trivia — it's the daily reality of professional translators. When a Portuguese novel builds its entire emot...

 

CIOL ran a members poll about their favourite ‘untranslatable words’.   Aside from the usual Saudade, I favour the following.   Caruma; - a collective term used to refer to the leaves (needles) of pine trees after they have dried and fallen to the ground; pine needles. - the husk surrounding immature chestnuts. Maresia: - air laden with seawater droplets (and its characteristic scent), which spreads along coastal areas, especially at low tide. - the oxidizing effect of this air. - gentle wave motion; swell. And we don't use Sobremesa the same way Spanish does, it means "dessert" and that's good enough.                                   Many shades of longing If one theme dominated the responses, it was longing. English gives us words such as nostalgia , yearning and homesickness , but other languages have their own rich and distinctive emotional palettes. One suggestion was the Portugues...

 Sinopse da editora ZERO A OITO : «Ser pai solteiro é um trabalho a tempo inteiro, e o Dad sabe bem disso! Especialmente com as suas quatro filhas com personalidades fortes, para quem a obediência não surge naturalmente… Com a devoradora de livros Pandora, a dramática Ondine, a traquina Roxane e, por último, a Bebérenice, este ator desempregado conseguiu ganhar o papel da sua vida: cuidar da família!»

Eduardo Brito-Henriques entrevistado pela revista Sábado . Associação Portuguesa de Geógrafos.