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English to Portuguese: There is no me without you by Melissa Fay Greene General field: Art/Literary Detailed field: Poetry & Literature
Source text - English The wind sprayed mist through the open door. The whitewashed brick room seemed to dip and sway as if we rode a houseboat whipped by dark waves. The mummified dowager at my side slowly gained ground, as her long cotton shawls began to unwind.
It had taken me a few weeks to get the hang of this. On the long afternoons when the air fattens to water in Addis Ababa, the city’s animal life—goats, sheep, donkeys, stray dogs, woodpeckers, catbirds, swallows—fall asleep standing up in crevices and bowers, or with their heads bowed in the deluge. That is when I long to trudge up the stairs to my room in the tidy Yilma Hotel, peel off my muddy shoes and socks, drink from a liter of bottled water, fall across the bed with Bahru Zewde’s History of Modern Ethiopia, and sleep while the tall, sheer curtains drift into the room full of the scent and weight of rain.
But I was stuffed into a love seat in Haregewoin’s common room and there was no getting out of it. The group inertia overwhelmed me. “Now?” everyone stirred and asked in bewilderment. “You want to go somewhere now, in this weather?” Some were thinking, I’m sure, “The ferange [white] has to go somewhere now?” My friend and driver, Selamneh Techane (Se-lam-nuh Te-tchen-ay), who was rolled forward with his head resting on his hands, sat up and looked at me with bleary confusion. Every time I tried to stand up, the mater familias beside me sloughed off another layer of shawls.
Translation - Portuguese O vento fez com que névoa entrasse pela porta aberta. A sala com paredes de tijolos caiados parecia balançar como se estivéssemos em um barco castigado pela força das ondas. A velha viúva sentada ao meu lado começava a se revelar à medida que desenrolava seu longo xale de algodão.
Levei algumas semanas para aprender a lidar com a situação. Nas longas tardes quando a humidade do ar se eleva e chove em Addis Abada, os animais e aves da cidade – bodes, ovelhas, burros, cães de rua, pica-paus, tordos-comuns, andorinhas – adormecem em pé nas fendas das rochas e abrigo das árvores, ou com suas cabeças abaixadas até que passe o dilúvio. É nessa hora que desejo ansiosamente subir as escadas que levam ao meu quarto no hotel Yilma, onde tudo está sempre organizado, tirar os sapatos e meias enlameados, beber água de garrafa, cair na cama com o livro História da Etiópia Moderna de Bahru Zewde nas mãos e adormecer enquanto as cortinas longas e transparentes esvoaçam pelo quarto impregnado pelo cheiro e força da chuva.
Mas eu estava enfiada em um sofá de dois lugares na sala de estar de Haregewoin e não tinha como sair dali. A apatia do grupo começava a tomar conta de mim. “Agora?” Todos se voltaram e perguntaram perplexos. “Você quer sair agora, com este tempo?” Tenho certeza que alguns estavam pensando: “A branquela tem que ir a algum lugar agora?” Meu amigo e motorista Selamneh Techane, que estava inclinado com a cabeça apoiada nas mãos, endireitou-se na cadeira e me olhou com ar confuso. Sempre que eu tentava me levantar, a matrona ao meu lado se livrava de outra camada de xale.
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Translation education
Graduate diploma - Universidade Gama Filho - RJ
Experience
Years of experience: 18. Registered at ProZ.com: Feb 2013.