The Difference: Speaking the language

Brazilians consume an enormous amount of American culture, including TV shows, movies, and music, but many of them rely on subtitles and dubbing to understand it.  English has become the fashionable language to learn and use, but only a minority speak it completely fluently. Brazilians accept the fact (or at least realize) that Americans do not speak Portuguese and anything they get from the States will be relatively Greek to them before it gets translated.

So when I was sitting in my living room and first heard Donald Trump start barking in Portuguese, I sat up in my chair and my jaw dropped.

As a reality show junkie, I watch a lot of People & Arts, a channel with mostly American TV shows. What I've noticed about this channel that sets it apart from other channels that broadcast foreign shows, or foreign-based channels, is that the internal advertising has begun using Portuguese by asking the American stars to speak directly to Brazilians. In a commercial for Celebrity Apprentice, Donald Trump  refers to the show using its Portuguese name (O Aprendiz), and says "you're fired" in English, Spanish in Portuguese [Voh say ess ta deh meh tido!]. In another, the male trainer from "The Biggest Loser" introduces the show in Portuguese (Perder para ganhar), and starts out by saying "Oi Brasil!"

To me, it makes all the difference in the world.

Take this in contrast with channels like HBO, which despite the fact that it has Brazilian shows, in Portuguese, often does most of its internal advertising entirely in Spanish, which pisses me off to no end. Clearly, channels like this have a Latin America division, rather than totally separate Spanish Latin America and Portuguese Latin America divisions. They try to save money by creating a single set of ads to distribute throughout the continent, instead of making separate ads for Brazil. This, to me, is extremely insulting, since Brazilians obviously do not speak Spanish and frequently get miffed if they are expected to understand it. It is also typical of Americans to lump all Latin Americans together into a single ethnic and language group, a concept which Brazilians don't exactly look kindly upon. As such, I think HBO-style advertising is lazy and in my opinion, counterintuitive.

I'd like to offer People & Arts' advertising as a lesson to all foreign investors and businesses in Brazil. Brazilians may have an odd obsession with English, and some of them may very well understand it, but they will sit up and listen if you make an effort to speak their language (even if you don't do it very well). It makes a huge difference.

Comments

[Jen]

Wait, Brazilians don't speak Spanish?

[Maciel Grecco]

It doesn't happen only to HBO. It's common in Warner and Sonny Channels (at least, the channels I watch most) to see pieces of text in the internal ads mixing Portuguese with Spanish. In both channels, the edition people are really not concerned to checking this or making it with accuracy. Terrible to see that.

[Carin]

You should definitely send this post to HBO's marketing department. It wouldn't surprise me if they do not know that Brazilians don't speak Spanish. Seriously.

[Eduardo Sant'Anna]

Oh yeah, it always makes the difference to speak at least a little bit of the local language. It shows respect, and that is for any country.

Regarding television, the premium HBO channels (i.e. HBO and HBO2) used to have a specific broadcast and program schedule to Brazil in the past, separated from the rest of Latin America. So, they definitelly know that Brazilians speak portuguese. The HBO channels actually had a famous Brazilian movie critic (Rubens Ewald Filho) as Director.

But unfortunately it seems they decided to do a single channel for the entire continent, obviously for economic reasons.

Maciel Grecco commented here about Sony and Warner Channel, and they are actually both distributed by HBO Brasil/HBO latin america as well. HBO, HBO2, HBO Plus, Cinemax, The Biography channel, A&E, History Channel, AXN, E!... They are all "HBO channels" in Latin America. People+Arts is owned by Discovery and BBC and is a fairly new channel. It was probably born with a different concept.

So, aparently it doesn't make economic sense for HBO Latin America to have every one of these nearly 15 channels duplicated (i.e.: more equipment, more people, more satellite utilization...) just for Brazil. They transmit the same channel with ads in spanish + portuguese and simply put a separate audio and/or subtitles for Brazil.

It really is a shame and looks lazy. But although Brazil is a huge country, unfortunatelly only a very small percentage of the households have cable/satellite TV. It's something like 5-10% of Brazilian households (as opposed to 95-99% in the US).

It seems it's not worthy for them. :-(

[Evelyn]

Amen to that! Portuguese is spoken by more people in the world than Spanish! You would never know it in the US. Thanks for your post :)

[Laurinha]

Right on, thanks for this great posting!
When I first moved to the US, I was shocked how everybody just assumed I spoke Spanish. Even the Hispanic people would approach me speaking Spanish without even asking me. And when I said I spoke Portuguese, many of them would laugh and say "that's the same thing".

[Alexandre Macedo]

Um dado importante e que deve, provavelmente, ser ignorado pelas emissoras: A população brasileira(aprox. 190.000.000 de habitantes) representa rigorosos 1/3 de toda a população da América latina(América do Sul, América Central e México).
Acredito que o fator de maior relevância para esse "descuido" seja a participação minoritária das Tv's à cabo em relação ao universo de potenciais telespectadores, estes, em ampla maioria conectados as Tv's abertas e falando na língua-mãe.
Aproveito o assunto para abordar um outro aspecto, quase imperceptível para a maioria dos assinantes de tv´s a cabo: A "onipresença" de propagandas e programas exclusivamente voltados para a comercialização de produtos, ocupando a grade de programação e restringindo o cardápio de opções.
Para refletir: -"O espaço ocupado pelos comerciais já não fora pago pela minha assinatura?..."; -"Meu objetivo não era o de obter uma programação alternativa que proporcionasse liberdade, sem essa 'opressão' comercial?"...
Abraço a todos.

[Andre]

Regarding Warner and Sony, they both have headquarters in Brazil. Plus, HBO definitely knows we speak Portuguese since it invests heavily in the Brazilian marketing and tries desperately to outshadow Telecine. A proof of that is how much they invest in production here. The budget for Alice, Mandrake and Filhos do Carnaval is about 1 million reais per episode believe it or not. It seems quite stupid to invest so heavily in this market and not even bother to translate commercials properly.

[Maciel Grecco]

Yes Eduardo. It's an economic case but I also ad lack of respect and disregard, cause it's common in the internal ads in Portuguese of Wraner or Sonny such things like this:

Ella non sabe a verdad
In febrero, nueva programação

Pure portunõl. It's a lame but it's funny because they're the first channels to assume Portunõl as the official language sometimes. Lazy editors? Lack of a bilingual team? After all, Portuguese and Spanish are the same languages, as someone said above. Or as an American friend used to make fun with me, "oh, no worries, you all speak Mexican, from Texas border to Patagonia". I used to replied: "oh, no worries for you too, you all speak cherokee".

[Gabriel]

Rachel, até onde eu sei, a People & Arts é um canal localizado em Caracas, na Venezuela, e que transmite programas de canais norte-americanos, principalmente da NBC. Algumas inserções comerciais, mesmo aqui no Brasil, estão em espanhol, acho que é porque vem direto de Caracas e os caras não dublam e tal.

Aliás, um programa que faz muito sucesso é aquele programa do Ty, o Extreme Make-Over. É curioso como a figura dele é bem chamativa aqui no Brasil, todos acabam gostando dele. Muitos com os quais conversei nem sabem o nome do programa, só falam, "ah, agora vou ver o Ty", e o cara acaba fugindo daquele estereótipo de americano que brasileiro muitas vezes tanto repudia, e até tira sarro.

Beijão!

[Blogirl]

Some days ago I posted a comment about my feelings of the US, referring to themselves as America and forgetting that is a name the comprises a whole continent. I saw it posted immediately... and now I can't find it.
I may accept my comment wasn't welcomed, but I think it was rude from you to delete it without an explanation, to say the least.