IS CONTINENTAL PORTUGUESE SPOKEN IN A COUNTRY WITH CONTINENTAL DIMENSIONS?
There was a time when Portugal and Brazil spoke the same language. Even though both countries and peoples still officially speak the same language, the localization industry has long recognized that Brazil is a country of its own, a locale with specific terminologies and styles. As author Bert Esselink mentions in his book A Practical Guide to Localization, pt_BR is the only of the so-called first and second tier languages specifically targeted at a particular locale – Brazil. But how long ago did this acknowledgement happen? I remember working from London in 1997 for a multi-language vendor in Brazil. They were providing a major European business software company with localization services into Portuguese. The style guide and glossary were created in Portugal, while the translation and review were performed by Brazilian vendors (some, like me, living abroad). The validation of new terms was also outsourced and then checked by an Iberian Portuguese speaker located at the client’s premi
