Portuguese Translation

Portuguese Interpreters And Translators

CIT offers Portuguese interpreters and translators with legal, medical and specialty experience, including criminal and civil matters, employee meetings, engineering, patent cases, labor disputes, immigration and more. We have European Portuguese interpreters as well as Brazilian Portuguese interpreters and translators.

Although based in Los Angeles, CIT offers comprehensive Portuguese language services including interpretation, translation and transcription, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, worldwide. Our interpreters and translators are native speakers who have been screened, certified, have provided credentials, field tested, and kept up to date with developments in both English and the Portuguese language through means such as lectures, conferences, and travel. CIT’s Portuguese language interpreters and translators possess in depth knowledge of the Portuguese language, as well as of the culture and history of the Portuguese people, allowing them to provide informed and complete interpretation and translation.

The Portuguese Language

The Portuguese language, also known as Portuguese, is a Romantic language spoken in Portugal and Brazil primarily, among with other Portuguese colonial areas. The Galician language, which is spoken in North Spain, is very close to Portuguese. The Portuguese language is the second most popular Romance language, second only after Spanish. Over 127 million people worldwide speak Portuguese. There are about 10 million Portuguese speakers in Portugal. Additionally, there are about 8 million Portuguese speakers in Africa, including in Angola, Cabo Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe. It is also spoken in the US, mainly in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

The Portuguese spoken in Brazil is different from the Portuguese spoken in Europe. There are several differences, including changes with verb conjugating, syntax, object pronouns and other grammar. For example, in Brazilian Portuguese, the object pronoun is before the verb. In European Portuguese, the object pronoun is after the verb. Portuguese is very close to Spanish.

There are four main dialects. They are: Central (also known as Beira), Southern (Estremenho, which includes Lisbon, Alentejo and Algarve) Insular (including Madeira and Azores) and Brazilian. The standard Portuguese spoken was first created in the 1500s from the dialects spoken in Lisbon and Coimbra. Brazilian Portuguese is different from the Portuguese spoken in Portugal in syntax, phonology and vocabulary. There are also records of a Judeo-Portuguese dialect from the 1700s that can be traced back to Amsterdam and Livorno (Leghorn, Italy). However, today, there are no traces to that dialect.

With the Portuguese sound system comes a lot of nasal vowels. The verbs system is different than that of the Spanish language. In the year 2008, the Portuguese government mandated that the Portuguese language use Brazilian orthography.

Up until the 1400s, Portuguese and Galician were one language known as Gallego-Portuguese. The evidence of this is from Latin texts from the 800-1100s. The literature of a the Gallego-Portuguese language was more robust in the 1200s and 1300s. Poets preferred the softer Gallego-Portuguese language and the language for literature flourished in the Iberian Peninsula (except for in Catalan). By the 1500s, Galician and Portuguese drifted apart. Between the 1500s and 1700s, Galician was used only in homes and not long after, in the 1700s, it was a language of culture. It became the official language of the autonomous community in Galicia, along with Spanish.