The Untranslatability of The Portuguese Word Saudade

As a Portuguese learner I had soon to face the problem of learning new vocabularies. Among them it is impossible not making reference to one of the most important: “Saudade”.

If you have been in Portugal or in Brazil at least once in your life, you should have heard about this feeling. Yes, because I am talking about “a feeling” which is untranslatable in other languages and that is a key word to understand the culture and the two countries as a whole.

As a consequence, in this article I am going to explain the etymology of the term first, then I will try to give a definition. Finally I will propose possible translations of the word.

The etymology of Saudade is controversial, however the prevailing theory affirms that it derives from the Latin Solitate which means “solitude”; from that term derives the modern for of Soledad”in Spanish and Solidão in Portuguese. Nevertheless, the form Saudade involves also the influences of Saudação, greeting, and Saude, health, salvation (archaic). An alternative theory is that the term derive from the Arabic, Saudah, which essentially mean the same.

But what is it Saudade? Saudade can be defined in specific, as the regret of not having enjoyed that which was to supposed be enjoyed. It is the strong but resigned desire to profit of something you were deeply attached to. Besides it is also the longing to see, or be in the company of, someone from whom we have reluctantly been separated.

However, Saudade in a more general definition is yearning: a yearning for something indefinite. It can be compared somehow to the German “Sehnsucht” or the French “Nostalgie”. It is melancholic regret; it is a romantic solitude accompanied by a vehement feeling of something missing. It can be referred to both something lost or something not achieved yet. Indeed, the question of time is also important: Saudade is timeless, it is other than the present, it is turning towards the past or towards the future.

Historically has deeply signed the Portuguese and Brazilian poetry of the 19th Century. Some Portuguese intellectuals at the beginning of 1900s considered this feeling as a symbol of the Portuguese cultural and nationalist renaissance.

Nevertheless, we should notice how Saudade in Portugal is deeper emotion than in Brazil, since it is associated both with the Portuguese fatalism in general and with the Fado folksong with its recurring themes as non reciprocated love, exile, sadness. Saudade indeed, is one of the essential ingredients of fado music and fado music express the best the “authentic Portuguese culture.

Anyway, how to translate a complex words Saudade is? There are undoubtedly complex emotional concepts that occur in various languages. The characteristics of “nostalgia” in English do not differs from the one “nostalgia” in Portuguese, but Saudade differs as it appears to be a concept much more specific to the Luso-Brazilan culture. Besides, nostalgia can be defined as a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time, whereas one can feel Saudade for something that might never happen.

“Homesickness” would not be a good translation, as it is too specific, since it refers to home only. “Home” is what hurt the most, whereas in Saudade, what is felt as missing can be a beloved person, a place or a situation as well.

I would suggest “wistful yearning or longing” as a translation, due to the fact that Saudade evokes a sense of loneliness and incompleteness which a deep melancholic longing can embodied. Of course it is neither a completed definition and nor a correct translation, as both the sense of indefiniteness the atemporal references are lacking. We should specify the idea of present past and future embodied in it. We should also specify the kind of Saudade we are feeling: if it is for a person, for a situation or for a place. As a consequence, a correct and exhaustive translation would required more than 2/3 words, I would say a sentence at least.

References:

Bell, A. F. In Portugal. (London and New York: The Bodley Head, 1912).

Borges de Castro A., Saudade, etimologia, significação e antologia, (Porto: Ediçao do Autor, 1980).

Pereira da Costa, Dalila L. & Pinharanda Gomes, Introdução à Saudade: Antologia Teórica e Aproximação Crítica (Porto, Lello & Irmão, 1976), p. 10.