What is To Translate ?
A simple question isn’t it? But  translating means much more than just changing the words of a language by the words of the other language. If it were so easy computers would do it in a fast and perfect way. Let’s change the situation for a moment: Suppose you are from another country and you are learning Portuguese. You know that "carro pequeno" is "carrinho" - "casa pequena" is "casinha" - "cachorro pequeno" is "cachorrinho"- this will make you think that "onibus pequeno" is "onibinho"- it's logical... but not correct. Remember that a language is not always as logic as Maths. When we learn English sometimes we do this kind of mistake. If you see the word "TENANT" we'd probably translate as "Tenente" but in fact it means "Inquilino"- "tenente" is Lieutenant-But a translation involves more than that. When you translate a text you have to adapt not only the words but also the way of saying things using expressions and phrases that have the same meaning in both languages. Otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense. Of course many words have a direct translation, too. There are some softwares able to perform reasonable translations but normally when you use one of them, you have to “translate” its translation into something more understandable. In this site, on the menu“Textos Bilingues you have texts in both, English and Portuguese. Read them carefully and compare the translations. You will see that sometimes it is not literal.The most important is to preserve the meaning, right? As we always learn in communication: “The message is more important than the media used to communicate”. That’s absolutely truth. It makes no sense to have a beautifully written text without a clear message in it, right? Is it so difficult to translate? No, it isn’t, but it demands knowledge, study, time, effort and all those things most of the students hate to do. If you are interested in learning you have thousands of chances around you. Get them and study seriously, because despite all the wonderful technology the only knowledge that is worthwhile for you, is the one you have in you mind.